Hello - Bailey is a 5 to 6 year old female with an Adrenal surgery under her belt, and going on a 2 year diagnosis of Insulinoma. She has been on Prednisone for a month and Proglycem for two weeks. The Proglycem did AMAZING things for her. She would wake up and play two to three times a day, eat up to 80 CC's a feeding, was alert and bouncing off walls. Then last week she just crashed. Went to eating nothing. Usually we can get her to eat with a syringe. Now, nothing. Have to scruff her and force her to eat. Won't drink, won't play, nothing. Took her into the vet on Friday. She had some X-rays which immediately revealed Pneumonia in one lung. She stayed at the vet Saturday and went home with him on Sunday. He was going to tube feed her to get her jump started. She fought that so much that he ended up feeding with the syringe. A day of Amoxycillan and food perked her up, he said. She woofed around and was happy. He tried to get her to eat her hard food last night and nothing. Today when we went to pick her up, he told us the Pneumonia could be from being stepped on (she got stepped on pretty hard, one of the reasons we took her in) but said that was 99% unlikely, even if it had caused fluid in the lungs. He said that since we were feeding her with syringes for the past three weeks, she could have developed Aspiration Pneumonia. He asked if she had gagged while feeding, and we said yes. We had thought it was due to nausea since she wouldn't eat on her own. He said that this diagnosis was also unlikely, but impossible to diagnosis as The Cause, and nearly impossible to treat. We got her home, and she took very little from a spoon. She has eaten nothing but Duck Soup for close to two months now. This is, obviously, entirely our fault. We were more worried about nutrition and stabilizing her Insulinoma than her eating hard food. When she got difficult to feed, before putting on the Prednisone and Proglycem, she willingly took food from a syringe. So we thought, "Hey! Great!" and kept working with a winning plan. Now I hear that this could very well cause what is making her sick, is highly unlikely to cure and to boot, she won't eat any other way! She will not drink water willingly. She will not eat Iams at *all*. She will not take Duck Soup without a fight. She is currently on .4ml of Pred twice a day combined with .1ml of Proglycem, and for the time being, on anti-biotics twice a day. She will whole heartidly take her medicine mixed with Ferretone. Actually, Ferretone is all she will take willingly. I simply can not say, "She'll eat when she's hungry" because she won't. She plummeted over 80 grams in bodyweight in 3 days. She will allow herself to starve, which triggers unbelievably bad Insulinomic reactions. She is constantly grinding teeth. I do not know what to do. It is absolutely tearing me apart that she is so sick. I lay on the floor with her to make sure she's breathing okay. I am so in-tuned to her that I wake up out of a dead sleep when she grinds her teeth at night, or when her stomach gurgles. I can not take the risk of feeding her with syringes anymore, but I know no other way to force feed. I do not want the trauma of tube feeding. I am also extremely distressed that I did not hear of this disease, or see any warnings of this when syringe feeding is so encouraged when a ferret is sick! Anyone with any way to get their ferrets to eat, please please email me. She absolutely HATES Brewers Yeast, so count that out. Julie [Posted in FML issue 2853]