From:
ahartnett@cox.net
Date: 2004-02-05 02:59:09 UTC
Subject: death from adrenal surgery
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <4172246.1075949949976.JavaMail.root@indium.smartgroups.com>
My ferret Brandy had a left adrenal removed and passed away the next evening. I was wondering if anyone has ever heard of what happened to her. She had adrenal disease and had been treated with Lupron for about a year before her surgery.
She had a large tumor on her left adrenal, a very small one on her right and a nodule on her pancreas but all other organs looked good and the right adrenal wasn't atrophied. Only the left adrenal was removed and the surgery went well; her temperature dropped but was normal when we brought her home about 4 hrs. after surgery.
She seemed dazed but the vet and we thought it was from the pain medication. She was able to move around the cage okay but wouldn't eat anything but Nutrical during the night and drank some water.In the morning she was so weak, she couldn't lift her head without crying. I brought her to the vet and her temp was 94 degrees. The vet did a sonogram and saw no internal bleeding from surgery. Her glucose was very low, her pcv's were 75, she kept twitching and was very weak. Her color and her heart rate were good but she couldn't maintain her temp. Her glucose was low and she was dehydrated.
The vet has never seen a high pcv count in a ferret and doesn't know why they increased after surgery. He did a phlebotomy on her that evening, got her pcv almost to normal but made no difference in her symptoms. He did another phlebotomy the next morning. By then she had bloody diarrhea. He doesn't know why she would have internal bleeding, he was no where near the GI. That is when we had her euthanized. She was moaning and in so much pain. Her legs were twitching but I saw deep contractions of her stomach which the vet said wasn't from the diarrhea, that was the twitches she'd been having.
The cause of death is unknown. He thinks it might have been a blood clot to the brain. He didn't do a necroscopy. Does anybody have any idea what happened to her?