My sweet Sonic has a new problem.  It would take me a long time to recap
her entire history, but briefly, she is 7, blind, arthritic, and was
recently treated for Helicobacter/ulcers with Biaxin, Amoxi, and Carafate.
She is eating kibble fine on her own now and no longer grinds her teeth.
Her ALT and alk phos levels that were mildly elevated from her not eating
consistently are still up a bit, but they are lower than they were
previously.
 
Sonic also has insulinoma, has had surgery, and has been on Pediapred (1
mg/kg) twice daily for about 4 or 5 months and diazoxide (10 mg/kg) twice
daily for two and a half months; the diazoxide was added after the pred on
its own didn't work so well.  Her glucose has been remarkably stable on
this regime (90-120 range) until recently when it went very high.  It is
now in the 350-570 range.  She is very thirsty and drinks a lot but also
pees a ton and seems to have trouble staying hydrated.  She groans when
she pees and also when she wakes up (hard to say if it's from the arthritis
or something else, maybe she's just not used to her bladder being *that*
full...).
 
Urinalysis showed lots of sugar but no ketones (sp?).  Also no infection
which was a concern since she cries when she pees.  A quick ultrasound
was done because of a possibly odd texture to one area of her abdomen on
palpation (she's got lots of fat in there, can be hard to feel what is
going on), but everything looked great - no enlarged abdominal lymph
nodes, liver and kidneys looked good, etc.  My vet drew me up a day-by-day
schedule of how to cut back her meds and we're checking glucose levels at
home every few days and I'll also be testing her urine for sugar and
ketones daily.  Hopefully her blood sugar will stabilize...
 
SO my questions are: Has anyone ever had an insulinomic ferret become
diabetic from pred and/or diazoxide?  And if so, did you get things back to
normal by cutting back or stopping either one?  Did anyone need to start
giving insulin?  Are there other things besides a weird reaction to the
meds that can be causing this (glucagonoma was something my vet found
mentioned as a possibility while she was doing some research but I haven't
heard anything about that before)?  Searching the archives showed a few
similar cases in the past but not all have followup and results seem mixed.
Seems like it can be hard to regulate these guys very well...
 
Any anecdotes or words of wisdom greatly appreciated!
 
Best wishes,
-Pam S.
[Posted in FML issue 3258]