From:
donrull@aol.com
Date: 2005-12-02 07:17:13 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] ferret 'screaming', violently shaking head and 'sneezing'
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
I'm hoping someone out there might be able to shed some light on a recent development.
I have a male ferret that is somewhere between 8 and 10 years old. He is adrenal (has been operated on 2 times and had both adrenal glands removed). He is currently on melatonin and lupron for this condition.
Approximately 2 weeks ago I awoke to the sounds of screaming coming from the ferret cage. I rushed in to the room and found that it was this older male ferret making the noise. In addition to the very loud noise, he was shaking his head very quickly and sneezing or exhaling while he was doing this. I took him out of the cage and carefully inspected him and nothing seem visibly wrong except there was a little irritation in one of his eyes.
I thought that maybe he had gotten something in his eye and carefully irrigated it. The screaming and shaking behavior was not constant, but would come and go and eventually subsided. I thought that rinsing the eye out had removed some irritant that was causing him to behave this way.
Beyond the debris in the eye theory, I also checked blood glucose levels in case it was a seizure (of which I am not familiar with exactly what they do). His blood glucose was just fine and he was as alert as usual. I ruled out any seizure due to potential insulinoma onset of anything else related to blood sugar levels.
Unfortunately, the next day he had this same behavior. This time it did not last nearly as long and it quickly subsided after I took him from the cage and comforted him. His eye was not at all irritated anymore. It seemed as if he may have simply irritated his eye when he was shaking his head so quickly and erratically during the previous session and maybe hit it on the cage of another one of the ferrets or something. Thus, the debris in the eye theory got ruled out pretty quickly.
This time I resolved to simply watch him more closely and ask around to other ferret owners I know and another shelter operator.
Just yesterday this ferret had the behavior again. I thought maybe he had some dental issue. It was time for a cleaning and I brought him to the vet for a cleaning and to see if there might be an answer for the odd behavior. The teeth cleaning went well, although there was quite a bit of bleeding. Beyond that nothing was found wrong orally. The vet also did blood work and everything was within normal limits. There appeared to be nothing wrong with him.
The catch 22 is that I cannot predict when he will have this behavior and it has only been a few times over the past couple of weeks. He did not do it when he was at the vets, so the vet had very little to go on.
Unfortunately, he just woke me up with same behavior. This time it was as intense as the very first time. It's really upsetting not to know what could be causing it. He seems just fine again now, but if something is wrong (and I can't imagine he would do it for no reason) I would like to know what it is and how to address it properly.
Has anyone out there witnessed something like this? Any ideas?
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