From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2004-05-25 06:37:36 UTC
Subject: RE: insulinoma
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <8151840.1085467056330.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
Susie, it may make sense to have her blood sugar levels run again to see if her medication dosing is right for her. She may need her dose adjusted.
What other tests were done? At her age there may be more than one thing going on.
In relation to doses: think of the liquid meds like a soup. A soup can be very thin like a broth, or it can be so dense that it is almost like stew. The dense ones have less water for each amount of the solids in then, and the broth has a real lot of solids. Well, medicines are like that. Some have a lot of the medicine and very little of the fluid so they have more miligrams of medicine for each milliliter. Others have very little medicine in them and they have fewer milligram of medicine for each milliliter. A milliliter is volume measurement like a quart is, or a liter is. A milligram is the weight measurement of the actual medication.
When you tell someone that you ate 2 cups of soup they don't know if you had two cups of broth and are still hungry, or if you had 2 cups of a very thick and rich soup and are full. The same thing with meds: either the weight of medicine itself in the dose needs to be known (the mgs of the med in each dose, OR a calculation can be done if the mg/ml is known and the ml dose measurement is given because that way it is possible fo calculate the mg amount.
Still, if she is still tired it simply makes sense to have her blood glucose run again and to see if anything else should be tested for, so a call to the treating vet (who may want to just try a different dose or may want ot retest) makes sense.
One thing that is good to remember is that some ferrets have trouble utilizing Prednisone. That is because it requires a certain liver processing step. Those ferrets do better on Prednisolone (a related medication) which doesn't have that liver processing step.