Right now, as I am typing this, my sweet lil four year old ferret, Dakota, is at the emergency clinic. He has to stay there overnight... This morning at 11:00 he had a vet appointment to get his Distemper shot (FERVAC). I was a little bit worried about the possibility of him having a reaction, even though he never had one before, I figured "its better to be safe than sorry". So i consulted the ferret shelter AND my vet (dr. cox) AND the FML archives about premedicating him with benadryl. So at 10:00, an hour before his appointment, I gave him 0.5 ml of children's benadryl (bubble gum flavor, if it makes any difference, I couldn't find unflavored). About 7 minutes after he got the shot, he started vomiting. I was worried, I tried being optimistic "maybe he had too many raisins". After maybe 15 minutes (I'm not really sure, it felt like forever to me) Dr. Cox comes back into the room with my Dakota wrapped up in a towel and tells me he IS having a reaction to the shot and that he started having bloody diarhhea (there was blood on the towel). Of course, I burst into tears and she told us to take him to the emergency vets (the vet's office closes at noon on saturday). So i put him in his carrying puoch (the kind that goes on your chest, like ones they have for babies) during the ride there (don't worry, i wasn't driving). During the whole trip, he just lied there, which is unusual for him, the only time he tried to get out of it was when he started dry heaving. He sneezed alot too. When we got there, he started dry heaving again and the vets took him back to check him out (take his temp, that sorta stuff). She brought him back along with a sample of his bloody dirreah to show me, I won't get descriptive but it was AWFUL. While she told us what she was going to do and then took him back. It bothered me that I didn't get a chance to talk to him before they took him away... you know, what if i don't see him again? The vet told me to call at 4:00 to get an update on him, which I did. He wasn't doing any better, or any worse. He was still throwing up and having bloody diarrhea. Then she called me at seven and said he is acting more normal, fighting them a bit, only vomitted once since the last update, but is still having the bloody diarrhea (she said it's gotten a little better). She said to call in the morning, so I'm gonna wake up at 6:00am and call them, hopefully I can have my baby back tommorrow (sunday). I call the ferret shelter to tell the lady who runs the shelter that he had a reaction, she gave me United Vaccines number and told me to call them & report it, she also said I should ask them to pay the vet bills his reaction has caused. I'm going to wait til monday and have my vet call United Vaccines. Has anyone else tried getting U.V. to pay the bill? I apologize for the length of this post, I'm sorry if it's confusing. thanks for taking your time to read this! =20 - Annamarie and her =C6=92ab =C6=92our of =C6=92errets... **Dakota, Autumn, Noel, and Dweezil** ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My outlook is that little things are the trip. =20 I'm very happy with very little. =20 Maybe that is why I have so much. - Linda McCartney ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Posted in FML issue 3037]