Message Number: YG11683 | New FHL Archives Search
From: thinkforyourself_com
Date: 2002-03-06 17:10:00 UTC
Subject: Will Tenn Panel show + on Bilateral Adrenal Ferret?

Hi,

My question is regarding my beautiful silver mitt Nyla who had
bilateral adrenal surgery last year. The left was removed and the
right cryoed, but she was never on Florinef. Her symptoms include:
weight loss, hair thinning (no balding yet), obsessive cleaning of
everything (the cats, the other ferrets, exposed human hair or skin,
herself...the list goes on) and excessive iching.

We took her to our vet who ran a general blood panel to look for
elevated values which might point us in a general direction, but
everything came back normal. She suggested a Tenn panel, but with
money a little tight right now (both my SO and I have been laid off
for six months and I just recently started a new job) we want to
stretch the ferret savings account since we haven't added to it in
awhile and won't be able to add more to it until we are a little more
on our feet.

My question is if the Tenn panel is done, does it pick up on a
certain hormone/chemical being produced or does it look at the
amounts of the hormones/chemicals to give a positive result? If it
looks for the presence of a hormone/chemical wouldn't a ferret who
had bilateral adrenal surgery and had a small amount of diseased
adrenal tissue left show up positive? If it is looking for amounts of
hormones/chemicals, wouldn't the small amount of tissue not be able
to produce enough until it was really big? And wouldn't that mean a
strong probability of invasion to the Vena Cava since that is the
area that the "small amount of tissue" is left over when it's
debulked/cryoed?

Also, my vet said that if Nyla is indeed adrenal again, she would do
Lupron rather than surgery. Nyla is only 4 and is happy and healthy
other than the list above, but my vet says that at this point it
would be for sure the right side and that that is a very hard surgery
to do. What would you all suggest?

Thanks in advance,
Stephanie
with Maggie, Bullwinkle, Shasta, Nyla and Nanook
missing with all my heart Icabod and Emeline