I hope someone can help me with a medical problem.  Here's the history,
followed by the current treatment and status.
 
My husband and I adopted Mojo, a now 16 or so week old ferret, about a month
ago.  He had been abandoned and was nursed back to health by Karen
Marsh-Lovvorn and husband at their wonderful shelter, Rogue's Gallery, in
Durham, NC.  He has a healed hind leg fracture (it healed up kind of funny,
but he used to get around on it fine, just a little gimpy sometimes).
Anyway, a few days ago, he began sliding around on his belly, with his hind
legs "paddling" behind him.  We don't know how the injury happened.
 
He's seen a vet, who x-rayed him but didn't see any bony problems.  Through
observation and process of elimination, he decided it's probably a spinal
cord injury.  We've been dosing him with Prednisone pills, which he takes
like an angel; the pred is supposed to act as an anti-inflamitory, reduce
whatever inflamation is around the spinal cord or disc, and allow it to
heal.  We started with a shot (sorry, don't know the dosage) followed by 2.5
mg twelve hours later, then 1.25 mg every twelve hours.  After some
improvement several hours following the shot, though, we stopped seeing
improvement, and we upped the pred to 2.5 mg every twelve hours three days
ago.
 
For a day or so, we were seeing him occasionally get his back in the proper
ferret-shaped "hump," with his feet under him, but then progress again
stopped.  We immediately gave (all of the dose changes have been under the
advice of the vet) 5 mg of pred, and again saw good improvement.  The vet
now thinks that even though 5 mg every twelve hours is a whopping dose for a
ferret, we have to do what it takes to see good results and hopefully allow
this to heal -- so we'll be going with 5 mg twice a day from here.  I think
the vet wants to try 7-10 days of good progress on the pred, then try
weaning him off of it to see if healing has taken place.
 
Mojo is in a cage to rest and stay inactive and hopefully prevent
aggravating the injury.  We let him slide/walk around for a few minutes when
we medicate him in order to check his progress.  I've been limiting his food
intake since the pred makes him ravenous and we don't want his spine to have
to support a huge amount of extra weight.  He isn't depressed and wants to
play hard when he's out.  And he can move around pretty fast, all things
considered!  As of now, he still mostly slides and paddles with his hind
legs, but will occasionally get his hump up and take a few steps, but then
he flattens out again.  On slick surfaces, his hind legs splay out to the
sides and paddle, but on carpet, they work directly behind him, toes digging
in for traction.  During the last couple of days, he's become able to lift
his tail a tiny bit; he couldn't do that at first.
 
Now my questions: Does anyone have any advice or similar cases to relate to
me?  Will all this prednisone have nasty consequences?  Does this seem like
a reasonable course of treatment?  Is there any time frame after which we
should consider that he's as good as he's going to be and let him play
wildly like a ferret again?
 
Any and all advice/stories/anecdotes will be greatly appreciated!
 
Thanks,
Pam Sessoms
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http://www.phy.duke.edu/ferrets/    --  Triangle Ferret Lovers web page
[Posted in FML issue 1666]