[Posted in 3 parts ... combined here. BIG]
 
Hi.  I'm posting this to the FHL as well, and this is kind of long, but I
need all the help I can get!  A few details may have gotten left out here
accidentally-Yahoo crashed right after I hit "Send" on my post to the FHL,
and this is a copy of the less precise second version.
 
I rescued two 2.5-year-old ferrets on Nov 19 from a neglectful owner.
Neither of them had even been named in 2.5 years.  Marley, the boy, has
no problems other than they were eating junk and he had some fur staining.
Renate (which means "reborn", FYI; I named them)is a little girl who was
under 350g when I got her.  She was a depressed skeleton with skin.
 
She seems to have a number of problems, not all of which we have solved,
proliferative bowel disease among them.  She has to go to the bathroom
constantly and is often unproductive of anything (we have ruled out UTI
at the moment), though often it is.  Her poops started out green (dark to
bright and bright orangey (like peach baby food-sorry), consistency of
pudding, often foamy.
 
A small mammal panel and a few UAs haven't been too revealing with the
exception of elevated white count and one UA with blood in the urine
(ruled out UTI) and some other slight abnormalities that weren't very
abnormal-nothing that said "aha!".  A fecal was negative.
 
We have had her on two courses of chloranphenicol palmitate and prednisone
with some improvement, including still-frequent but normal stools.  She
put on weight pretty rapidly the first time, making it up to about 650g on
the meds and with frequent ferret soup and Nutrical feedings, then rapidly
deteriorated and lost weight (back down to 435!) as soon as we tapered
off the prednisone (we dc'd the chloran. palm. about a week before); also
redeveloped the weird poops.
 
We restarted the chlor, but saw no great improvement in weight gain,
though the poops returned to normal (still REALLY frequent).  At about
that time she had one bout of a bloody, proliferative vulva with some
blood in the urine, but the UA wasn't very revealing, and though we are
watching her very slightly-enlarged vulva, it hasn't happened again.
After restarting the pred, she gained again (weight check tomorrow, but
I'm guessing she's back around 550 or so), and we dc'd the chlor. without
much noticeable result.
 
Now that she is gaining weight on the pred again, she has restarted with
the foamy, greenish poops in the last two days.  She is having a recheck
on Tuesday and I haven't been able to mention to the vets I work for the
latest about the poop.  The two vets I work with and all our techs really
don't think this is ECE, and ADV tests have been negative.
 
She cannot make it even down the ramp in the cage to the bathroom many
times and thus has been hard to littertrain, though she tries-it's hard
having to go every ten minutes or less (the intervals are literally less
than two minutes between trips to the potty oftentimes).  It's really
crazy how often she has to go, even on the pred and when she was on the
chloranphenicol palmitate.
 
Through most of this she has had a great appetite after her initial
weakened state (started eating heartily within a day of my rescuing her)
with the exception of the night before we restarted her prednisone when I
stayed up with her much of the night crying and trying to make her eat
ferret soup, Nutrical, anything while she refused and ground her teeth.
 
I have been continuing to try and get the occasional syringe of ferret
soup in her and every-day Nutrical, but she eats her mix of Ferret Store
Superior Choice Diet, Zupreem and Marshall's all day on her own.
 
The vets I work for, who do see quite a few ferrets and whom I feel good
about treating with, are a bit stumped and we were hoping for any input.
I would be happy to send medical records and labwork to anyone who may
have the time to help us.
 
Thanks so much,
 
April and Shawn with Renate, Nicodemus, Finnegan and Marley
[Posted in FML issue 3662]