From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2005-04-18 16:25:56 UTC
Subject: RE: melatonin related?
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <3152980.1113841556211.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
Okay, first off, remember what melatonin is. Is is a compound which the body itself makes when it gets enough darkness. (The degree of darkness matters since even a little light can really decrease the production.)
With your first ferret, Joni, it sounds like the adrenal disease really took off from at least one bit of tissue remaining behind and she developed the anemia complication which takes some adrenal ferrets. Dr. Jerry Murray has some marvelous past posts discussing this complication. See posts from AFERRETVET in
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org
Rustywas being helped by the melatonin and you should consider also getting LUPRON DEPOT into him since you say that he isn't a surgical candidate, or if you are in Australia then Suprelorin is an option.
Blade's low blood sugar: that could be from insulinoma (or more rarely a different pancreatic growth), or from his anorexia causing his sugar to drop, or both. There tends to be a reason behind anorexia and some of those can also cause extreme weakness, for instance lymphoma or cardiomyopathy and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can be hard to spot too often. Since melatonin can cause some sleepiness that would make such limitations more noticable and give you a useful heads-up to do more tsting on this little one.