[Brooke Tomaszewski writes about a limp, disoriented, drooling ferret with
tilting head and ear discharge]
 
Hi Brooke,
 
It sounds like Molly has a pretty bad ear infection.  If she is consistently
falling over to the left, it sounds like her left ear is infected enough
that her semicircular canals aren't working correctly on that side.
 
The drooling sounds like she is nauseated.  She won't be interested in
eating on her own until she feels like the world isn't spinning around her.
Also, since she won't be eating normally, don't expect normal stools.  You'll
want to hand feed her (carefully--don't force liquid down her throat or she
might get pneumonia) until she isn't disoriented.
 
The same thing happened a couple of years ago to my ferret Diesel.  He had a
really sudden onset of drooling and flopping down limply.  In his case, the
infection even got worse and involved his left optic nerve (we saved his eye
when it wouldn't blink by giving him artificial tears and antibiotics every
4 hours).  He still tilts his head to the left when he looks up, and he
can't hear in that ear, but he's mostly levelled out.  He's was definitely a
happy guy again within a couple of weeks.
 
The first vet we took Diesel to didn't really know what was going on, but
did prescribe amoxicillin.  The second vet (who has treated hundreds and
hundreds of ferrets) seemed to have a much better idea of what was going on.
 
The vet should have at least given her amoxicillin or another antibiotic to
take home (maybe he did--I couldn't tell from the posting).  I'd also
imagine that steroids might be worthwhile to minimize the inflammation and
scarring in such a delicate area.
 
Then again, I could be completely wrong--I'm not a vet and long-distance
diagnosis is an uncertain thing...
 
Good Luck!
Dennis
[Posted in FML issue 1629]