From:
Caitlyn Martin
Date: 2004-08-28 04:08:17 UTC
Subject: Lady Ayeka: insulinoma/adrenal surgery; chronic diarrhea
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <27994366.1093669114164.JavaMail.nobody@chromium.smartgroups.com>
Hi, everyone,
Some time ago someone asked how long could a ferret be
on prednisone/prednisolone/pediapred and still have a
successful insulinoma surgery. I believe the original
poster's vet had said that once the ferret was on pred
surgery was out of the question. Well... Lady Ayeka
was on pediapred for two years and seven months before
her surgery last week.
Here's her background and history which I think is
pretty unusual. Lady Ayeka is a six year old spayed
female. Her other medical problems to date were
benign mast cell tumors (two removed, one at age one
and another at age six). At age three and a half she
was diagnosed with insulinoma.
Our vet started her with 0.1 ml (1mg/ml concentration)
of pediapred once per day. Her glucose went high and
we began backing off her dosage. At 0.03ml her
glucose was fine. At 0.02ml it crashed and she had
significant symptoms. During the subsequent two years
we had to gradually increase that tiny dosage, first
to 0.04ml, then 0.05ml, and finally 0.08ml about a
year ago. Oh, and yes, those leading zeros are
correct. The dosage was truly miniscule but it worked
for her.
About three months ago Lady Ayeka started to have
chronic diarrhea. She's had diarrhea on again/off
again for her entire life. All diagnostic work was
always normal. She was treated with tylan with no
results, then metranidazole (sp?) (a/k/a flagyl) with
no results. Finally we gave her kaopectate with no
results either. She'd poop it out white and seemingly
undigested.
In the past few weeks she started showing insulinoma
symptoms again as well as classic adrenal symptoms.
Our vet decided to do exploratory surgery fearing
lymphosarcoma in her GI tract. He ended up removing a
left adrenal gland (twice normal size), a large single
nodule from her pancreas, and taking a biopsy from her
stomach. The rest of her GI tract looked normal: no
thickening or inflammation of any sort. Her lymph
nodes looked normal as well.
Lady Ayeka is recovering very quickly from surgery on
Tuesday. We let her out with the other ferrets for a
short, closely supervised time for her mental health.
She didn't understand why we picked her up after she
pounced Chin Soon to start a wrestling match or why we
objected to her climbing. She seems to feel fine --
good appetite, lots of energy, but... The diarrhea
continues. Her only medication at this point is
Clavamox .25ml 2x a day which is what our vet normally
gives after surgery.
We're waiting on pathology reports at this point.
I guess my question is this: if the stomach biopsy
shows nothing abnormal that we can treat then where do
we go from here with her diarrhea?
All the best,
Caity and the fearsome foursome