Dear Sara: >We had a four year old spayed female come into the shelter who was on >.6 cc of Prelone syrup (5 mg/5 ml) twice a day for insulinoma. The person >who gave her up said her vet had never discussed the possibility of >surgery with her. This ferret would crash if she didn't get her >prednisone doses every 12 hours. So we scheduled surgery, and the vet >says that her pancreas looked absolutely normal! No tumors to be seen. >Her liver was very pale and fatty, which he didn't like, and he went ahead >and took a piece of the pancreas. Every once in a while you come across an obvious insulinoma patient but can't find a nodules. Sometimes they are diffuse and small and don't jump out at you, even as you palpate the pancreas. In these cases, we have found that removal of a part of the pancreas, the lobe that does not contain the ductwork that conducts the pancreatic secretions to the intestine, mind you! - can be beneficial. In fact, partial pancreatectomy has a longer post-surgical disease-free interval than nodulectomy alone. So it depends upon how large a piece he took - perhaps he did a partial pancreatectomy, and did not properly communicate the extent of the surgery to you. The liver is probably just fat accumulation, which can happen readily in a ferret that is not eating. It represents a physiologic response rather than any disease process. Keep watching that glucose closely. With kindest regards, Bruce Williams, DVM [Posted in FML issue 3322]