>Teriyaki was diagnosed with insulinoma Monday......
>What should I expect?
 
Old John Bear (JB) is ending a long battle with insulinoma probably very
soon.  Having gone through it with our first ferret ten years ago doesn't
make it any easier to go through.  At first he was a bit more lethargic and
a low blood sugar reading was picked up on an annual exam last year.  He
has been on Pred which helped a lot and make a more or less normal life
possible for him.  Increasingly though, his muscles began to weaken and
he had difficulty walking.  The end really started several weeks ago when
he wouldn't eat the medicine in the brown (petromalt ?) any more and we
switched to tablets.  Those lasted a week or two when he finally wouldn't
open his mouth for any of that.  Last week we switched to Diazoxide which
produced truly amazing results..... for about a day and a half.  Even
Peaches was surprised and you could see that she was offering him
encouragement.
 
Soon though, he had again began sleeping a lot and had lost his appetite
for solid and then even liquid food.  Though for a while he would drink
the new medicine from a syringe.  Last night he wouldn't even swallow water
from a syringe.  Peaches tried to climb in to a ski hat with him, but soon
changed her mind and has mostly avoided him.  He is at peace, breathing
with a bit of a rasp, quite warm and comfortable on a bed of towels and
two ski hats.  Peaches and his favorite toys are nearby.  He weighs just
a fraction of the muscle bound studly terror that he was when neutered at
six and a half months.
 
On the half full side, Peaches who is at least two years older and was
diagnosed at the same time as JB and did not have early surgery for the
disease, still takes her medicine and is still her old mischievous self.
Last night she got upstairs from the basement and knocked something over
which woke up the dog (poodle - Schnauzer mix) to come downstairs and
begin barking.  Peaches quickly hid and Poppie soon decided it was nothing
and came back to bed.  Go figure, and Who says that dogs are smarter then
ferrets??
[Posted in FML issue 3253]