Message Number: YG306 | New FHL Archives Search
From: Pam Sessoms
Date: 2001-02-27 11:03:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Fwd: Intro and dilemma

Sent a private reply to Jaclyn last night, but I haven't seen this come up
yet and thought it might be interesting to see if anyone else had seen it
too. "Tales from Pam's House of Insulinoma," sort of. Anyway:

> --- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., Jaclyn <jaclynv@e...> wrote:
> The other adrenal ferret, Trevor, is approximately 5-7 years old
> (Marshalls again) and I got him as a stray in March of 1997. He had
> insulinoma surgery in April 1999
<snip>
> He's in great shape mostly. Though, twice now, he's gotten very dark
> pink. His nose, ears, around his eyes and his lips would suddenly
> turn dark red-pink. He'd feel hot, though we couldn't successfully
> take his temperature. By the time we got a good reading, the color
> was gone and the thermometer read 102. While he was dark, he was a
> little listless and would go lay on the tile, as if he felt too hot.
> It was gone in the matter of 20 minutes.

I had a foster guy who had severe insulinoma and adrenal disease when he
came to me, and he had surgery (left adrenal, partial pancreatectomy) and
did well for about 8 months. Then his rt adrenal started going bad, and
he also started having insulinoma signs again, and he had a few of these
"hot flash" spells a lot like what Jaclyn describes with Trevor.

He'd turn red, get very hot, sometimes pant, etc... They were transient
and I always thought they were some kind of weird blood sugar thing
because of the listlessness. Just before his second surgery, I found him
half-dead in a full insulinoma crash (drooling, teeth clenched) on top of
an air conditioner vent. He was very cold, and I imagined he had had a
hot flash and went to lay on the vent to cool down and then became very
limp from low blood sugar and became hypothermic from the cold air. I did
pull him out of it with karo syrup, warm SQ fluids, and a heat pad set on
low (it was a holiday of course, my vet was out of town, and the emergency
vet is over an hour away from me), but it was about the worst crash I've
ever seen.

Of course I have no idea if Trevor's spells are related to the
insulinoma... Just saw a couple of similarities.

Anyone else ever seen an insulinoma ferret have these kind of hot
flashes? Did they by chance also have adrenal disease?

Hmmmm,

-Pam S.