From:
deevecchione
Date: 2001-12-20 17:45:00 UTC
Subject: IBD ferret had transfusion today, vet advise needed
Hi all,
Well, thank you to everyone who replied to my post about my little
BJ. I managed to get the bleeding stopped late last night. He had two
fairly normal looking BM's before I went to bed. He even played with
his rattle eggs a bit. When I went to check on him at 3 AM, he was
lying half in and half out of his nest box in the ferret room, and
his back end was slimey with clotted blood and feces. There were 3 or
4 small puddles of clotted blood and one had red blood, which really
freaked me out. I cleaned him up, gave him some carafate and went
back to bed. I felt it best to let the Carafate go undisturbed, so I
didn't feed him.
At 6:30 AM, I went in to check on him again. He was dehydrated, very
pale(white) and very lethargic. He felt like a rag doll. I gave him
75 ml of lactated ringers, .4 ml of Dexamethasone, and 3 ml of Vit. K.
I gave him 36 cc. of Duck soup(literally...pureed Duck and Green Pea
liquified with electrolytes). I chased that with his Amoxi and
Biaxin. He was a little shivery, so I went back to bed, and put him
on my belly under the covers. He warmed up, then he had to go! I ran
him over to the litter box, and a beautiful brown BM appeared with
little blood! Yay! The rest of the morning and early afternoon, he
pooped out exactly what he had eaten and nothing more. He was
starting to get even more lethargic, so I arranged to have the
transfusion in the early afternoon. He got 10 cc from one of the
hospitals hobs. When I got home, he had some spunk again and shook
the heck out his rattle eggs. About 40 minutes later, the bloody BM
returned. I was afraid that the stress of the transfusion might have
that result. I can only hope that I can get back what I had earlier.
Someone privately suggested that he may have disseminated
intravascular coagulation, and heparin is often used for this
successfully( in dogs,anyway).Vets, any imput? Can a ferret be given
heparin? If so, what dosage for a 2 lb. ferret and how frequently?
What is the prognosis?
My vet was only comfortable with taking enough blood to do a platelet
smear and Azo. I'll get those results tonight when she comes in. A
tech did the transfusion today. She left the catheter in and bandaged
it up, just in case we need to do another transfusion.
Thanks for all your support gang! I'll keep you posted.
Dodie