We've written about Nicky before and a lot of folks have helped. We're just looking to get some ideas on his latest health status. Nicky's about 7 or 8. He's a shelter rescue so we don't really know. He was diagnosed with an insulinoma after his low blood sugar was discovered in April. He was on 1/2 cc prednisone twice a day. A few weeks back, he had a seizure at the vets office while we boarded him there while we were on vacation. A few days later, our vet recommended we add Proglycem to his med routine. 1/10 cc twice a day. A couple days later, another seizure at home. We brought him out of it with some syrup and nutrical. The vet then had us double his dosage of Pred. We also got a recommendation from some on-line ferret friends to add a kind of gruel to his diet. The gruel is made by blending up the solids strained from low sodium campbell's chicken noodle soup, his normal science diet wet food, nutrical, karo syrup, some vegetable oil and a little water. He gets this for dinner. For breakfast we mix some with the Science Diet. This gruel is supposedly designed to give him an easily absorbed diet of nutrients he needs that will help stabilize his blood sugar throughout the day. It seems to be working. No more peaks and valleys of hyperactivity after getting his sugar up too high, and no more low blood sugar seizures. But while there are no more acute emergencies, he seems to have stabilized in a condition that's not the greatest. Here's the current symptom list. 1) Hind end weakness. He has the energy to propel himself across the floor, but he can't seem to be able to hoist his body off the carpet. It's a real problem when he gets into the litter box (or even when he doesn't make it) as he poops and pees all over himself. He's been getting baths every night to get all the muck off of him. 2) He's gotten really fat. I don't know if its from the new diet or from the increased dosage of pred, or from the new addition of proglycem. I also don't know if all this excess belly weight is the reason he can't hoist himself up. 3) Loss of bowel control. It's not a complete loss. He's able to make it to the box sometimes, but nowhere near the way he used too. He also seems to be unable to make it over the sides and into the box sometimes and he poops on the floor while his front half is in the box. We've got some boxes with the sides cut out for easy access, but this doesn't seem to help him. 4) He's depressed. It's so obvious to tell that he knows he's sick and that he doesn't like being this way. He still tries to be active when we get home from work. He paws at the cage door and bites the bars until we get him out. Then he motors about the room for a few minutes and then gets into his little bed on the floor and goes to sleep. Sometimes, however, he can't even get his hind end up onto the bed pillow. It's that weakness again. 5) His appetite is fine and he eats heartily, but he doesn't seem to be drinking that much. We've tried adding some pedialyte to his bottle but the mix doesn't seem to help either. He must be drinking something, because we do scoop out some pee from the box, but not much. Has anyone seen any of this before? Does anyone have any suggestions? Is he just getting old? Most importantly, we want to improve the problem of the poop and pee getting all over him. Not only is it unhealthy for him to go that many hours from when we leave for work til when we come back with that stuff on him, it's also really time consuming and inconvenient to bathe him each night, as well as run his cage floor carpet through the washer too. Not that we won't do it. We'll do what we have to. We'd just rather try to find a way to prevent it. Of course his depression is sad too. I wish there was some way we could cheer him up. Thanks for your suggestions. Paul & Melissa [Posted in FML issue 1711]