From:
Debi Christy
Date: 2001-04-03 12:55:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Low blood sugar but no physical signs
In Ferret-Health-list@y..., ferretwoman33@y... wrote:
"Lo" which he said it would register if it was too low to read.
>
> --- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., AFERRETVET@c... wrote:
> > A 21 blood glucose is extremely low, so one would expect
> > signs in this ferret
On my machine (& machine error codes vary) "Lo" means the drop of
blood was not enough to cover the strip to get a good reading rather
than the blood glucose level itself being too low. I don't intend
this as any sort of criticism of your vet's clinic, but we should all
be aware that, just because it's a vet clinic doesn't mean everyone
on the staff knows how to correctly use the machine or interpret the
results. At our local clinic, the staff had to look through the
instruction book for definitions of error messages. In this
particular case, I'd ask for a CBC test to obtain the blood glucose
results, which is what our clinic resorted to after repeated "non-
definite" readings. Personally, I like real numbers.
We have had several rescue ferrets with extremely low numbers like
this to have few observed or no symptoms. When testing a ferret
that's showing symptoms, we often also test others that show no
obvious symptoms other than short play time which might just as
easily be due to age. In doing this we've caught several 40's, a
couple of 30's and one 21, (out of aprx. 50 tested ferrets).
Bear in mind "excessive sleeping" and "shortened play time" are
conditions that occur gradually making it difficult to pinpoint and
say "She/he's sleeping more than usual", especially when you're
comparing with only one or two other ferrets of similar age.
Debi Christy
Ferrets First Foster Home