From:
meltodandcats@juno.com
Date: 2005-05-27 05:28:57 UTC
Subject: Post insulinoma surgery agitation??
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <4421801.1117171737464.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
Hi! This is my 1st post, however I read and learn so much from you all! Thank you!
I am really worried about my baby, Fred who is about 6 or 7 years old - exact age unknown as he was a rescue ferret. I adopted in June of 2002.
Fred has had two insulinoma surgeries in the past year. The most recent one being on this past Tues, May 24. The 1st surgery involved his right adrenal as well as insulinoma and was performed by an excellent local surgeon, but not a ferret knowledgeable surgeon. He never fully gained the strength I thought he should have from his 1st surgery (I am not saying it was of any fault of the surgeons). He has had a lot of hind end weakness basically ever since we owned him. We thought is was because he got so fat over the winter. He would walk and his poor little hind legs would just fly our from behind him. Well, I don't think that his weight is 100% the reason since he never got fully better from the 1st surgery last year.
Unfortunately, Fred got worse in the last two or three months. I didn't want to make him go through a 2nd surgery for as weak as he was and since the first surgery took it's toll on him - he got really depressed and his glucose kept dropping on him. Plus he lost about a pound since Jan of this year!! So the vet put him on Diazoxide suspension 50MG/ML. He had me giving him .3ml twice daily, then increased to .4ml twice daily and finally .5ml twice daily. He has been on Prednisone since last May 2004!! I finally convinced the vet to switch to Prednisolone to skip the liver process. His last blood results showed there could be some liver issues. This is the dosage for Prednisolone in Ferretone 2MG/ML Sus. I gave him .75ml twice daily.
It was apparent, the meds were not working and he kept getting weaker. The last time he was in the vet, his blood glucose was so low it could not be read by their internal machine. He crashed on me about 3 weeks ago and the vet thought he was not going to pull through at that point, but he did. For as low as his glucose has been, he never seizured. (Thank God) Our local vet is not a ferret specialist but he is not afraid to learn nor afraid to admit when he does not know something. I trust him in that respect. For more serious cases, I travel 4 hours in one direction to a vet I discovered off the internet. He is VERY ferret knowledgeable and one heck of a nice down to earth person. So we took Fred to have his 2nd surgery this past Tues. We picked him up yesterday. The vet told me his blood glucose was still low following the surgery, but he expects it to come back up. He said he was FULL of tumors on his pancreas and he had removed about half his pancreas.
Due to the length of travel, I did not get to observe Fred too much last night. He was pretty much out of it and slept most of the time. However this evening he kept pacing the floor. Like he was troubled or something. He wasn't wincing or crying out like he was in extreme pain. He did squint his eyes some. I could tell he was VERY weak. I left him take a couple laps thinking he was going stir crazy and then I stopped him as he kept falling over. I plan to contact the vet tomorrow to get his opinion. I am very concerned about Fred!! But I am wondering if it might be a reaction to the Torb - pain med?? I mean, I get migraines and have ended up in the ER and have been given certain pain meds that made me feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin. So I guess this could happen to ferrets as well?? Any thoughts?
He did have black tarry stools which the vet was aware of - the vet told me about them occurring after his surgery. It looks like he had 2 black tarry stools here at home and then 2 lighter brown more softer stools. Has this happened to any of your kids? I don't want to lose Fred. I have 8 total ferrets, but because I have been medicating and caring for Fred over the past year, we truly have bonded. Oh, I have also given him Gerber's chicken baby food daily for the past year. I have since switched to turkey baby food after learning at the symposium that the turkey is a little better for them.
Thank you for your time and any thoughts or suggestions would be most appreciated!
Melanie