From:
Kay Goodall
Date: 2005-08-25 21:52:32 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] Re: slow heart rate
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <430E3DA0.8040901@polecat.org.uk>
Warning - this is a long post! I'd be really grateful for any advice
anyone could give.
I wrote before about Honey. Overall, the news is good. In some ways
she's much better than before. She's getting up and trotting around a
little sometimes, and showing interest in her world again. Her heart
rate is faster, and apart from a little coughing and rare
breathlessness, there's much less sign of respiratory problems than
before. Loki, our young male, has been delighted to see her better, and
solicitous. When she was struggling to get into her box today, he sat
under her and pushed her up!
On the other hand, she's very up and down, and still having to be hand
fed, and her stools are so changeable. I'm going to go back to see the
vet tomorrow, but there are so many variables that I'm trying to get a
handle on what's happening before I ask his advice. Maybe if I list all
the details, this will help sort out what's most important.
Tuesday was a particularly good day. She was lively, eating lots of the
new cooked egg and soya milk mix, and doing well. Her sleeping heart
rate by that time was about 90 (when we first went to the vet, it was
60). She got her new meds and I gave her the Enacard and the furosemide
that evening, with Ferretvite to help them down. She seemed a wee bit
weaker after them, and had looser stools, but was quite good again by
the next day. I made the stupid mistake (which it took me a day to
realise) on Wed night of giving her another dose of Enacard which I
wasn't meant to do - she's to have a quarter of 1mg tablet every second
day, and 0.1ml of furosemide twice daily. She seemed weaker that
evening, and her heart rate was down to 80, but she was still better
than before, and she picked up to 84 today, with 90 by this evening. She
has stops and starts sometimes, and has to sit down, but at other times
she's quite quick on her feet, and overall she's staggering very much
less than she did before.
So overall, the progression is up. Her stools are also odd. I think
they have some blackness in them, suggesting gastric trouble. I
mentioned this to the vet at the last visit. But now at other times
they're frothy and almost orange, with no blackness, and very runny. I
think she may be urinating at the same time as defecating, though I
don't know - the stools sometimes sit in a pool of what seems to be
urine. The furesomide I guess would make her pee a lot - she does seem
to. She farted yesterday before defecating a frothy stool - not
something I've heard a ferret do! This happened after I'd given her
three meds, all in a little mix of either Ferretvite or Kittymalt. She
was weak that night and I worried that the meds weren't suitable. I
then read that Kittymalt (a hairball treatment she loves) can cause
diarrhoea. Disastrous! I will definitely not give her these again, and
am now learning to gently make her take meds on their own.
Today she was a bit better, though again she's did a frothy orange
diarrhoea (7pm) followed by less extreme ones later in the evening,
despite not having been given any meds except the furesomide about 11am
this morning, and no sweet supplements.
She only really wants to eat the warmed egg mix. I want to get her away
from this. This evening I've tried to keep her to Vitalin, ground down
and mixed with water. I managed to give her some Hills A/D this morning,
warmed and mixed with a little soya milk, though I wasn't sure if its
dairy content would be suitable for her. But mostly she spurns
everything - kibble, fresh salmon, whatever. But she's not having much
of the ground Vitalin and I think she would eat more of the egg if I
gave it to her. I gave her some during the afternoon, and she ate a lot.
I don't feel happy about giving her the egg mix more than occasionally.
I'd like her to eat meat-based food. Will Hills A/D be OK even though
it contains dairy and she has gastric trouble?
It also greatly concerns me that she won't eat anything unless I
actually hand-feed her. She sniffs at her bowls but takes nothing.
What she really likes, even though she's more active now, is to be
hand-fed in bed. That way she eats most. The problem is this means I
have to be there most of the time, and feed her every 2 or 3 hours
during the day, every 4 during the night. This is OK in the short term,
but it'll be very problematic if it goes on for long as I need to be in
the office for work some days.
She seems to prefer licking the food generally to eating mouthfuls of
it. I've not noticed her drinking much at the moment, but she does
drink sometimes, and doesn't seem dehydrated.
This has been a rather long explanation! I think the vet will be
pleased that overall there's an upward trend, but I'd like to get an
idea of what symptoms I should be emphasising to him, and what questions
I should be asking him now.
He has said that he can't do an ECG as she would move around too much -
any suggestions? He also says he will also consider ultrasound if it
comes to it, but he doesn't have one himself so he'd book her for one at
the Vet School. This isn't a problem, except that they've told me
before that the wait for appointments there is a long one. Should I
push for these? Her heart rate is improving, but is that enough or not
to confirm that the meds are right for her?
It's such a worry - if I knew exactly what I had to do, I'd happily do
it, but I keep being presented with a slightly different scenario every
few hours! I guess that's typical of caring for sick ferrets - lots of
learning to do.
Thanks!!
Kay