From:
lothruin@yahoo.com
Date: 2002-08-17 03:42:41 UTC
Subject: Liver problems - Critical condition
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <3735200.1029555761783.JavaMail.root@scandium>
I need advice from a vet. My ferret, Tasha, who is 3.5 years old, recently moved, along with the other 5, myself and my fiance, into our new house, where they no longer share our bedroom.
Saturday, Aug 3, I noticed she had "poopy-butt" and gave her a bath. I thought perhaps the bath water made it look more like blood than feces, but when subsequent mild diarrhea was not at all tarry, I thought that was unlikely. I made an appointment that day for her to see the vet on Monday, and in the interim, kept a close watch on her eating habits and stools. She seemed the normal happy ferret, and her stools didn't get any worse, but neither did they get much better.
On Monday, Aug 6th, she was prescribed 10 days of amoxi with pepcid and metro(nidazol?). Of course she hated it, did the foaming and clawing for all ten days, but showed immeadiate improvement. Some weight loss had been noted over the weekend, but that began going up again, and her stools normalized, and as always, except hating her medicine, she was the happy energitic ferret.
This monday, 3 days from the end of her medication, she started a downward swing again, losing weight, and showed lethargy. As late as Wednesday evening, at her last dose of the medication she was obviously going to have to go back to the vet, but was alert, and retained the energy to stand on her hind legs and sniff at the treat I offered her, (she declined, very odd,) and wander about the room exploring.
By Thursday morning, she was worse, and an appointment was made for Thrusday evening, when the vet proposed an overdose of the metronidazol. Since then, she has been fed every hour with chicken baby food, her weight loss was critical, and despite forcing as much water into her as I could, she became severley dehydrated. Back to the vet this afternoon, (Friday) and they put her in an incubator, and administered sub-Q fluids.
Her blood count and glucose levels are normal. She is not losing any more weight, neither is she gaining, but she is passing, and a blockage has been ruled out by x-ray. She shows highly elevated liver and kidney function. (Some kind of number 8 soemthing when normal is 1.3 or 1.5?) They have administered injections of anti-biotic, and when I visited her tonight, she had lost a degree in body temp, but was able to raise her head, though wobbly, and try to look at me.
The vet gave several possibilities, including an infection in the liver, lymphoscarcoma (said there were no other symptoms of this,) cardiomyopathy (said the heart looked good on the x-rays so he doubted it,) liver shunt, (said he'd never heard of this in ferrets,) or an alergic reaction to the metronidazol, (Also never heard of this in ferrets.) At this point, Tasha is in the incubator at the hosbital, and he believes all that can be done is make sure she gets food and water, he thinks continuing antibiotics is a good idea, and hope the kidney and liver function normalize.
Are there other possibilities? Does this sound more like one or the other of these? Any suggestions or discussion would be appreciated.
Melissa Kuzara
Feeling lonely without Tasha