Hi Everyone, I want to ask if anyone knows what "illness" our ferret experienced recently. Here's Clyde's story: Three weeks ago he began to go "off his feed". We were at the bottom of our old food bag and the new order (it's Amway high protein kitten food) had not yet arrived. He had loose stools but was drinking well and would eat A/D 3-4 times a day. We tried crunching up the dry food in A/D and he would have none of that! New food came and he would still not eat, not with coaxing, crumbling it up, etc. Sukie suggested via e-mail that we try a second bag--that did not work. When he had lost half his body weight, was lethargic and began digging at his mouth we took him to our vet who seems to do all the right things based on y'all's posts. (Let me say that Clyde occasionally goes off his food especially during sheds and high stress periods--when are holidays NOT high stress?--and so we were not too alarmed at first). Vet noted he had no fever, gum color/condition was fine, but he was lethargic and of course not eating. Clyde also has a huge spleen from day one, which I swear gets larger during these stress periods but goes back down when he is on the mend. The vet I think believes I'm nuts to say that, but Clyde has never had any noticeable ongoing symptoms related to the spleen that we are aware of. He did have some abdominal tenderness-- made little mewly sounds if we were not careful handling him. There were no intestinal parasites from a fecal smear the vet checked. Clyde's Blood sugar was low normal. We sent off blood to have a complete panel done. In the meantime we started him on Baytril 22.7 (1/4 tablet, 2x a day) which I grind up and mix with A/D to get him to take it down. The vet said to give him dextrose (50%, 2cc 3-4x a day) to get some sugar into him because his blood sugar was on the low side. As soon as we began the dextrose Clyde crashed really bad. No muscle tone, no responsiveness, no nothing. I was freaking out because that was exactly what happened with our Bonnie (who died last April), and so I elected to stop the dextrose. I gave him 1/2cc Pettinic every couple of days, and Ferrotone. Clyde bounced back within a couple days. More energy, eating enough A/D to maintain body weight, but any sweet stuff threw him into a downturn. At this point we also had seen green poop, seedy poop, regular poop, no poop and anything in between depending on what we gave him. We decided to try to break up some solid food and force feed him by putting small pieces in his mouth--he really went nuts then! He produced volumes of thick mucous, started clawing at his mouth (I stopped that by immediately giving him a little A/D) and I was horrified to see some sores on his gums from that. Happily these healed up immediately. Eventually (we were waiting for the blood test results over Xmas weekend) with coaxing and by gradually decreasing the amount of A/D we gave him, Clyde began to eat small amounts of solid food on his own or with us holding and petting him. Throughout all this he would walk up to his food dish, stare at it, act nauseous, and curl up to go to sleep. He is now back to normal--still on the Baytril--but eating and playing and his old self. Blood test results came in Thursday--normal this and that, low normal blood sugar, slightly elevated liver enzymes, high cholesterol (he is not a treats eater, no table stuff, only occasional vegetable oil when he seems to need it), high red cell count, high red cell density, and WBC's are okay. Vet says he had no sign of infectious disease there. So, what WAS this? Clyde has had similar incidents many times over his six-in-February years, but only one other time was it as serious and that was the 3-4 weeks after Bonnie died. He's very affectionate with us--a chubby 3lb 4oz neutered, descented male with the sweetest disposition you've ever seen. Happy New Year! Gail and Bob and Clyde and Bonnie-Rainbow-Bridge-Gate-Watcher (since April '98) [Posted in FML issue 2543]