Hi!
 
I am really worried about my baby, Fred who is about 6 or 7 years old -
exact age unknown as he was a rescue ferret.  I adopted in June of 2002.
 
Fred has had two insulinoma surgeries in the past year.  The most recent
one being on this past Tues, May 24.  The 1st surgery involved his right
adrenal as well as insulinoma and was performed by an excellent local
surgeon, but not a ferret knowledgeable surgeon.  He never fully gained
the strength I thought he should have from his 1st surgery (I am not
saying it was of any fault of the surgeons).  He has had a lot of hind
end weakness basically ever since we owned him.  We thought is was
because he got so fat over the winter.  He would walk and his poor little
hind legs would just fly our from behind him.  Well, I don't think that
his weight is 100% the reason since he never got fully better from the
1st surgery last year.
 
Unfortunately, Fred got worse in the last two or three months.  I didn't
want to make him go through a 2nd surgery for as weak as he was and since
the first surgery took it's toll on him - he got really depressed and his
glucose kept dropping on him.  Plus he lost about a pound since Jan of
this year!!  So the vet put him on Diazoxide suspension 50MG/ML.  He had
me giving him .3ml twice daily, then increased to .4ml twice daily and
finally .5ml twice daily.  He has been on Prednisone since last May
2004!!  I finally convinced the vet to switch to Prednisolone to skip the
liver process.  His last blood results showed there could be some liver
issues.  This is the dosage for Prednisolone in Ferretone 2MG/ML Sus.  I
gave him .75ml twice daily.
 
It was apparent, the meds were not working and he kept getting weaker.
The last time he was in the vet, his blood glucose was so low it could
not be read by their internal machine.  He crashed on me about 3 weeks
ago and the vet thought he was not going to pull through at that point,
but he did.  For as low as his glucose has been, he never seizured.
(Thank God) Our local vet is not a ferret specialist but he is not afraid
to learn nor afraid to admit when he does not know something.  I trust
him in that respect.  For more serious cases, I travel 4 hours in one
direction to a vet I discovered off the internet.  He is VERY ferret
knowledgeable and one heck of a nice down to earth person.  So we took
Fred to have his 2nd surgery this past Tues.  We picked him up yesterday.
The vet told me his blood glucose was still low following the surgery,
but he expects it to come back up.  He said he was FULL of tumors on his
pancreas and he had removed about half his pancreas.
 
Due to the length of travel, I did not get to observe Fred too much
last night.  He was pretty much out of it and slept most of the time.
However this evening he kept pacing the floor.  Like he was troubled or
something.  He wasn't wincing or crying out like he was in extreme pain.
He did squint his eyes some.  I could tell he was VERY weak.  I left him
take a couple laps thinking he was going stir crazy and then I stopped
him as he kept falling over.  I plan to contact the vet tomorrow to get
his opinion.  I am very concerned about Fred!!  But I am wondering if it
might be a reaction to the Torb - pain med??  I mean, I get migraines and
have ended up in the ER and have been given certain pain meds that made
me feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin.  So I guess this could
happen to ferrets as well??  Any thoughts?
 
He did have black tarry stools which the vet was aware of - the vet told
me about them occurring after his surgery.  It looks like he had 2 black
tarry stools here at home and then 2 lighter brown more softer stools.
Has this happened to any of your kids?  I don't want to lose Fred.  I
have 8 total ferrets, but because I have been medicating and caring for
Fred over the past year, we truly have bonded.  Oh, I have also given
him Gerber's chicken baby food daily for the past year.  I have since
switched to turkey baby food after learning at the symposium that the
turkey is a little better for them.
 
Thank you for your time and any thoughts or suggestions would be most
appreciated!
 
Melanie
[Posted in FML issue 4890]