I know it's been said before and this is totally not explained in a
scientific way - but our vet has said, the thing to remember is that
whenever you have a ferret who is older, even when you do bloodwork,
you are dealing with a ferret who has a problem with hormones, plus you
never know what else is wrong. You might have an underlying disease or
imbalance, borderline insulinoma being masked by adrenal, or just have
a rare side effect without the hormones or products being made or kept
in balance from the adrenal problem, the ferret might crash a few weeks
after the implant. I forget what this is called, but it calls for
pred/steroids, and they can't always be saved. We have implanted many
ferrets. We had one die a few weeks after - pred did not help at all,
and her blood sugar was extremely low, and unable to be picked back up
and she passed away despite fluids and prednisilone shots/oral pred.
She crashed over 24 hours. Do I believe the shot had something to do
with it? Probably, but I have no proof other than what occurred, which
of course, could be a complete coincidence. I have had this happen
with another ferret who had adrenal surgery as well, but prednisilone
brought her out of it (this was also about two to three weeks after
her adrenal surgery so we were flabbergasted). The ferret was did not
have insulinoma and only needed the pred temporarily and was tapered
off and she hasn't been on it since. About a year after her surgery,
she received implants since she was older then, and also hind-end
paralyzed. She's had almost a year on the first implant, no issues.

Our vet says we have about the same chance of a ferret crashing after
an implant as you do when you do the adrenal surgery (which he says is
rare). The ferret who crashed after the surgery only had one adrenal
out, not two, so the vet was surprised but said simple solution, pred!
Thankfully it did work. Out of dozens of ferrets and foster ferrets in
networks I know of, no one has had any crashing after surgery or
implant except for the two I spoke of.

The thing is, owners and rescues stop doing surgeries on older ferrets,
and are giving implants to ferrets who are deemed unhealthy enough
or too old to have surgery. Coupled with the fact that implants are
typically far cheaper than surgery, we're going to see way more
occurrences of using implants than surgeries - and so we will be going
through this "is it safe" phase. Just my two cents. Also, of course, a
lot of times, it could be a completely unrelated thing, but we've had
at least twice where the ferret was impacted by the implant/surgery,
and the ferret who survived did not have insulinoma and just needed a
boost during the time her body was adjusting to the reduced adrenal
tissues (vet's opinion, I am not a vet, and I don't mean to say the
vet is correct).

I guess bottom line - if the majority of animals are not having issues,
and that seems to be the case - then you just have to weigh the pro's
and con's and that's all you can really do. I have a fully naked guy
here because he's 8.5 and I don't really dare put an implant in him. Am
I being selfish? Probably. But right now he has no prostate issues....
sometimes I think just leave well enough alone. If he gets another
urinary tract infection and it won't go away, or prostate issues, I
might. The vet gave me the explanation about the surgery/implant
risk and I just can't bring myself to do it. He's already had three
surgeries, two adrenal and one for a hernia, and never quite walked
right after one of the surgeries. Even now he gets stiff legged in the
hind end....I don't know what to do for it. It happened right after
one of his adrenal surgeries. It got a bit better but now when he gets
up he just wants them straight out....I don't know if other people
have ferrets that do this. He'll even fall into his soup if I don't
hold him. Then after about 6 minutes he will start stumbling around.
Anyway - I know this all has pretty much been said but just wanted to
chime in.

[Posted in FML 7418]