From:
farrell_cynthia@hotmail.com
Date: 2002-09-04 23:57:38 UTC
Subject: insulinomic ferret suddenly not eating
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <12932010.1031183858893.JavaMail.root@scandium>
Greetings and thanks in advance for your help. I haven't posted in a long time b/c we've thankfully been problem free.
One of our little girls, Sasha (age unknown but estimated around 5) is insulinomic. To control it, we feed her chicken baby food 2-3x/day and give her a dose of pred with her evening meal (can't remember the dose - that's my husband's gig). She eats the regular food we give the others 2-3x/day as well.
She's been doing REALLY well lately - no episodes, and in fact this weekend we were commenting on how active and bright-eyed she was, walking around really well with no hind leg weakness.
Starting with her afternoon feeding on Mon., she is suddenly expressing no interest in eating. Mon. and Tues. morning she did eat after looking at it for a while, but last night when I gave her her "lid of guk" she just sniffed at and then laid down where she was. Same thing happened this morning. Both times I was able to coax her to eat, but today when I got home from work I ended up force-feeding her with a syringe (and included an extra dose of pred).
She spent the day alone in her cage to monitor her eating and pooping. She IS drinking water - I watched her do that just a short bit ago - but she didn't touch her food all day. She's not impacted - she passed a fair-sized (but funny color) poop from this morning's feeding - and she's not showing signs of a hairball. No vomiting either. My next thought was a cold, but our other two are fine and neither one of us has had one. I was afraid the force feeding might cause a seizure - stress seems to affect her like that - but it didn't. However, she is extremely lethargic.
Obviously we need to get her in for blood work, and especially to get her BG checked. And knowing how important it is for her to eat, I'll keep forcefeeding her if I have to. But I'm hoping some of you might have some other thoughts on what could have suddenly brough this on, what I should be looking for, or any other suggestions. Thanks so much -
Cynthia