Just to show that there are some happy ferret stories too: Some of you may recall me posting previously about my ferret Sammy. He was diagnosed with insulinoma about a year ago. His blood glucose at that time was about 65. The first thing we tried was surgery; the vet removed a couple of nodules from Sammy's pancreas last June, but that didn't seem to help Sammy much. Over the past year we started Sammy on Prednisone, occasionally increasing the dosage, as well as adding supplemental duck soup feedings 4 times daily to Sammy's diet. In early April this year Sammy's attacks were on the rise, and increasing his pred dosage wasn't helping him much. Fasting B.G. would sometimes drop as low as 20. I decided to try surgery again, since Sammy was also losing hair on his tail and so we had to check the adrenals anyway. The vet removed Sammy's left adrenal, which was slightly enlarged. He also did a partial pancreatomy this time, removing about 1/3 of Sammy's pancreas at the rear where a number of small nodules were clustered, as well as removing two larger nodules near the middle and front. Two weeks later when Sammy's stitches came out, I was stunned to hear his blood glucose was now 100. Another couple of weeks have gone by since then, and Sammy is doing great. He's completely off prednisone, is no longer getting supplemental feedings, is eating great on his own and is full of life and energy. I never expected such a turn-around. I couldn't be more pleased. :) -- John Rosloot, Caregiver to Cassidy and Sammy With loving memories of my dear departed Buddy Technical analyst, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Regina Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~john/ferrets [log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 3046]