From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2003-05-06 04:44:35 UTC
Subject: Re: in hopes that it is not serious
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-id: <a05210603badce7853d6e@[10.0.1.10]>
Okay , I want to get this straight. Were you told by the operating
vet that insulinoma was possible? The reason that I ask is that you
are mentioning the symptoms of adrenal neoplasia (the fur loss which
is classic and which may well return once we're a bit more past
shedding season) but in that section of your letter you did not
mention insulinoma symptoms (exhaustion, sleeping more, staring off
vaguely, behaving as if nauseated, etc.).
It IS possible that the ferret had the adrenal neoplasia causing the
fur loss but the vet also suspected insulinoma which would explain
the word sticking in your memory.
Insulinoma is a condition in which growths (which can sometimes be
very small -- even microscopic so it can be easy to miss some in
surgery) secrete too much insulin. That lowers the blood sugar which
causes exhaustion in the mild cases. Symptoms are worse in bad
cases: convulsions and so on.
The thing to do is to have the ferret's blood glucose checked by a ferret vet.
Both of these conditions are usually addressed surgically quite
rapidly by ferret vets because of how successful that can be, though
some ferrets are put on meds instead.
These are two of the most common health problems encountered in
ferrets. May I suggest that you read some of the excellent
references out there? If you click on the Complete Archives bold
print on the website you will find hundreds of posts on these two
problems. You can link to a number of excellent articles by going to
the Critical References at http://www.ferretcentral.org.
Four years old is not old -- just about like a human being 40. An
age like that in the ferret's prime would not be causing exhaustion.