From:
pjdutche
Date: 2002-05-04 08:56:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Insulinoma complicatoins?
Hello,
First, as you mentioned, it is definitely a good idea to get her
blood sugar checked to see if the pred dose needs to be increased.
It is very important, when managing insulinoma, to keep track of the
blood sugar. Medications will definitely need to be adjusted during
this illness.
> Is that something that happens to blind ferrets? They get depressed
> and disoriented or something?
The conventional wisdom says that blind ferrets do great and that
often it's impossible to tell that they are blind. However, I have
personally had a ferret who lost her vision and had all kinds of
difficulty with depression, getting disoriented, even panic attacks
when she was in unfamiliar areas. That seems to be very unusual, but
my Sonic went blind before she had other major health problems, and I
am quite sure that her problems were due to blindness.
For her, I marked the walls, doors, furniture, things that she bumped
into, with vanilla extract. It worked well; she still cut a strange,
curvy path getting from place to place, but she stopped wrecking into
things full force, and her depression became much better. I think it
really helped her navigate and to stay oriented. Sukie has used essential
oils (available at health food stores) for the same thing and has
seen some success; could use different scents for different rooms to
help them out with orientation, even. My Sonic is gone now, but I think I'd use the oils instead of vanilla extract now if I had another blind ferret with problems like that. Seems like it would work even better.
Something else that helped Sonic was to be consistent in where I
would set her down after carrying her. Each room had a "landing
area" and I also made sure to point her in the same direction each
time. I think that helped too... She seemed less disoriented when I
would "reloacte" her that way. :)
Anyway, first order of business is to see if Mystik's blood sugar is
OK. Insulinoma is certainly a more common cause of spacing out and
disorientation than blindness. If her blood sugar is fine or if she
doesn't improve once her blood sugar is corrected, it can't hurt to
try some adjustments for her blindness. They're harmless in any case
and can't really hurt. :)
Good luck,
-Pam S.