From:
sukieferret
Date: 2002-02-09 19:13:00 UTC
Subject: Re: sick, deaf, and now adrenal?
The equilibrium problem may be from some inner ear damage
from the infection.
If he's a decent surgical candidate an exploratory might make
sense. How marked is the fur loss? It sounds like you might be
wondering IF that could be connected to his ear infection or the
antibiotics.
In cases that are unsure there is the Tennessee Panel test; you
cna find references to that by using the search engine at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Health-list .
We had one who was placed on Lupron as a test to see if
symptoms would go away (They did.) but have not heard of
others using it for that approach. (It was amost completely sure
for her, and she wasn't a surgical candidate, plus she is hard to
get blood from and crashes when she stresses.)
To teach your vet about Lupron there is fine info in multiple
health resources that can be found in the Files section, and the
Bookmarks section of
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Health-list
I especially advise the published papers of Charles Weiss:
http://www.bradleyhills.com/
and
http://www.ferretdoctor.com
Lysodren can cause adrenal gland atrophy and that has its own
problems such as Addison's crashes when it occurs. I do not
know if short term use can cause any problems and you'd have
crashing if there were any. Many, many years ago -- 15 or so --
we had one on Lysodren and it took about 8 months for that to
happen with him.
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., Bryan Gaidanowicz <bgaidan@y...>
wrote:
> -Three weeks ago, he came down with a severe ear infection
which ruptured one of his ear drums. After three weeks of being
on two very strong antibiotics(Chloramphenicol and Baytril), the
infection has cleared, but his head is still left at a slight tilt and
his equilibrium is still a little off.
> -During these vet vistits, he was diagnosed as being
completely blind...
> -While on the antibiotics, he began to lose fur around the back
part of his shoulders and some slight thinning around his upper
stomach and tail. I also noticed "seedy" looking stoll after the
second week of treatment but that has since disapeared along
with the infection. He also has not lost any more hair...
>
> -My former vet diagnosed it as adrenal with just a physical
exam and prescribed lysodren. I asked her about lupron and she
didn't know anything about it and didn't seem to want to learn...
>
> Somewhat fed up with her, I brought him to a new vet last night
for a second oppinion. He was very worried about the lysodren
and advised me not to use it until we were sure that he had
adrenal. He too had not heard of lupron.