From:
"Roary"
Date: 2004-05-08 01:04:34 UTC
Subject: Insulinoma problem
To: <ferrethealth@smartgroups.com>
Message-ID: <001401c43498$6d6deb10$26a12344@digitalcmp5a4v>
Puff just had surgery for insulinoma today. He's a 5 and half year old male.
The problem is that there no tumors/masses on the pancreas that my doc could
see. There was a growth near the pancreas, however, and instead of tumors on
the pancreas he found an adrenal tumor (left adrenal) that had grown into a
blood vessel. Both tumors were successfully removed. The adrenal tumor was
the size of a small lima bean. My doc thinks the other tumor might have been
lymphatic. There was extensive bleeding with the removal of the left adrenal
tumor, but Puff is doing fine (good gum color and normal blood pressure per
my doc) and we're monitoring him at home carefully.
My doc says it's a good thing we caught the adrenal tumor when we did, or it
might have become inoperable before we noticed symptoms of adrenal disease.
Puff had no symptoms of adrenal at all, except that he has been somewhat
agressive his entire life. No hair loss or any other symptom to indicate
adrenal disease.
My doc explained that sometimes tumors can produce hormones which act like
insulin, but he really can't be sure why she had such a low blood sugar
level at this point. The Prednisone stopped the low blood sugar episodes.
We're going to send the tumors out to pathology, but not till next week.
My question is what might be causing Puff to have insulinomic symptoms?
Logically, if her pancreas didn't have any tumors why would her system be
producing so much insulin as to give her low blood sugar episodes? (which
went away with Prednisone. Also, Puff gained his weight back) Has anybody
had a problem like this?
Although I don't post very much, which is an apparent GOOD thing ;) , I do
learn alot from all you guy's posts. I wanted to thank you all for that.
Roary and Yvonne
Albuquerque, NM