Message Number: SG10919 | New FHL Archives Search
From: cyprus4211@aol.com
Date: 2004-10-04 12:43:55 UTC
Subject: End Stage Insulinoma? Dietary Sugars? long post
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <1159311.1096893835084.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>

My 6 year old male ferret has had insulinoma for a little over a year and a half. He is over his limit on meds but they don't seem to bother him. But his meds only hold him for about 4 or five hours out of the day. The meds have never worked that well for him anyway. He has never had one seizure and has had only one reaction (drooling, pawing at the mouth, etc.) which we brought him out of fast. He does however have a lot of times where his whiskars twitch and his BG is obviously low.

He is on 2x a day
.35ml diazoxide 25mg/0.25ml
.4ml prednisolone 30mg/5ml
.27 lasix 15mg/mlsuspen (as a preventative-the vet saw some fluid in his bronchial tubes but his lungs were clear)
plus he gets 6 drops pf Devils Club Supreme (I know there is controvery over this but when we started him on it it made a significant difference)

I have started giving him fruit baby food to keep his blood sugar up. He only eats soup (boiled chicken, baby food, Zupreem & Konsyl, we have now added some blended up rice). He has gotten very fat. The vet did an x-ray and an aspiration of his lymph node and found only fat. He has been overweight before but never this fat. I do believe his meds would work a lot better if he could loose some weight. When I can get his blood sugar up with the fruit he explores everywhere and gets into things. When I don't he just sleeps and adds on more weight.
My question is what kind of dietary sugars should I give him? The baby food only seems to last 1 1/2 hours, 3 or 4 when his meds are at their peak. Is there anything that will last 2 or 3 hours? I love to see him active again. I just want whatever time he has left to be enjoyable. He also won't feed himself, he's too lazy. I have to give him his food and wake him up to feed him. I would like to just leave him some sugary treats but he probably won't get up to eat them. Any suggestions on that?