From:
camshas
Date: 2002-01-13 19:56:00 UTC
Subject: proliferative bowel disease? other culprits?
Hi. This is my first post here and it's kind of long, but I need
help! Renate, one of my rescues, is a 2.5-year-old little sable
girl who was under 350g when I got her-a skeleton with skin. She
and her brother (who has had no problems other than his former owner
was feeding them junk and his fur had some staining) came to me on
Nov. 19 from a neglectful owner. Renate had been "not eating much,
losing weight and having diarrhea for MONTHS" before I got this guy
to give her to me. They didn't even have names in 2.5 years-I named
them!
Anyway, Renate (means "reborn", FYI) seems to have a number of
problems, not all of which we have solved, proliferative bowel
disease among them. She has to go to the bathroom constantly and
her trips are often unproductive of anything (we have ruled out UTI
at the moment), though often it is. Her poops started out green
(dark to bright and bright-orangey (like peach baby food-sorry),
consistency of pudding, often foamy.
A small mammal lab panel was not particularly revealing, though
bloodwork and a UA have shown somewhat elevated white counts and
occasional blood in the urine.
We have had her on two courses of chloranphenicol palmitate and
prednisone with some improvement, including still-frequent but
normal stools. She put on weight pretty rapidly the first time,
making it up to about 650g on the meds and with frequent ferret soup
and Nutrical feedings, then rapidly deteriorated and lost weight
(back down to 435!) as soon as we tapered off the prednisone (we
dc'd the chloran. palm. about a week before); also redeveloped the
weird poops.
We restarted the chlor, but saw no great improvement in weight gain,
though the poops returned to normal (still REALLY frequent). At
about that time she had one bout of a bloody, proliferative vulva
with some blood in the urine, but the UA wasn't very revealing, and
though we are watching her very slightly-enlarged vulva, it hasn't
happened again. After restarting the pred, she gained again (weight
check tomorrow, but I'm guessing she's back around 500-525g or so),
and we dc'd the chlor. without much noticeable result.
Now that she is gaining weight on the pred again, she has restarted
with the foamy, greenish poops in the last two days. She is having
a recheck on Tuesday and I haven't been able to mention to the vets
I work for the latest about the poop. The two vets I work with and
all our techs really don't think this is ECE, and ADV tests have
been negative.
She cannot make it even down the ramp in the cage to the bathroom
many times and thus has been hard to littertrain, though she tries-
it's hard having to go every ten minutes or less (the intervals are
literally less than two minutes between trips to the potty
oftentimes). It's really crazy how often she has to go, even on the
pred and when she was on the chloranphenicol palmitate.
Through most of this she has had a great appetite after her initial
weakened state (started eating heartily within a day of my rescuing
her) with the exception of the night before we restarted her
prednisone when I stayed up with her much of the night crying and
trying to make her eat ferret soup, Nutrical, anything, while she
refused and ground her teeth.
I have been continuing to try and get the occasional syringe of
ferret soup in her and every-day Nutrical, but she eats her mix of
Ferret Store Superior Choice Diet, Zupreem and Marshall's all day on
her own.
The vets I work for, who do see quite a few ferrets and whom I feel
good about treating with, are a bit stumped and we were hoping for
any input. I'd be willing to send office notes and labwork to
anyone interested in seeing them and helping!
Thanks again!
-April, Shawn and the gang (Renate, Nicodemus, Marley and Finnegan)