From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2004-10-20 08:25:43 UTC
Subject: allergy to med
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <4526794.1098260743297.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
Tonight we had Sherman develop and allergy to an antibiotic (whch is why I am up at 4 a.m.). He is improving now but I figured I give a few details because even though this is rare someone else is going to run into it some time.
He was showing signs of having caught a bacterial sinus infection that Steve and i have so -- since he has severe IBD and crashes fast when he gets sick -- antibiotics were begun. (He is also largely bald -- partially from adrenal disease related loss which didn't return after sugery but mostly due to steroid use for so long.) Two hours later I went to check on him to get some soup into him and instead found that he had lost his bowels on himself, He was having trouble breathing, he was a slightly purplish pink (a very unusual skin color you'd never forget on seeing it), he was rasing (mostly) small blood blisters in real time all over himself and some had burst including on one leg, on the base of his nose and in his mouth, and he was very unresponsive but not unconscious.
In his case the vet thought that the trip to get epi would stress him so badly that given how far we are from care it would make more sense to see how a MG of Prednisolone and watch him carefully. The coloration responded first, followed by reduction in the blisters in 20 minutes, and improvements in breathing in 40 minutes.
In 23 years I can't recall another ferret here who reacted to an antibiotic, but if anyone has this problem perhaps having some details beforehand and in the archives will help.
He began getting that coloration back 8 hours later so in went another 1 mg then. Right now he is tired and weak but much better than he had been. I think we will have to sub-cu him tomorrow and he needs to get in some nutrition but can't swallow as well as he needs to yet.
So, it will be tricky for while yet, i suspect. He's on my lap right now and has been held for something like the last 9 hours.