From:
"Pam Sessoms"
Date: 2007-08-26 13:24:51 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] Re: Right Side Ataxia in Seven Year Old Female Ferret
To: leannleitner@yahoo.com
Leann,
I have an old lady named Harriet who one day woke up tilted and
stumbling to one side. Like you, I immediately checked a blood sugar,
found it normal, and beat feet to the vet. Even though her ears
looked OK externally, she did in fact have a nasty inner ear infection
and was showing vestibular signs like Renee mentioned. My vet had to
sedate her in order to manipulate her ear enough to visualize her ear
drum, and then she could see it was perforated. A swab showed a lot
of white cells. A culture and sensitivity showed the bacteria was
Pseudomonas, and it was only sensitive to Baytril and something
obscure that escapes my memory now. It took awhile, but she did
recover fully and now only has a slight head tilt when she looks way
up.
Anyway, I guess my point is that if your vet didn't *really* look at
the ears in great depth, don't give up on the ear infection
possibility just yet. Of course, maybe your vet did just that, I
can't tell over email. :) Also, if it does turn out to be an
inner/middle ear infection, those can be from really nasty bacteria
that don't respond to the more common antibiotics, so you'd need to
get a culture and sensitivity to be sure the right drug was being
used.
At first glance, we were sure Harriet had a brain tumor or other
serious neurological problem. Besides the tilting and stumbling to
one side, she had nystagmus (eyes vibrating side to side), and one
pupil was pointing straight up while the other pupil was pointing
down. One side of her face didn't look right. It was really awful.
Harriet was greatly improved in about 2-3 days on the antibiotics and
could stagger in a more or less straight line, and in 1-2 weeks she
was nearly back to normal.
Harriet's only symptom that something was wrong prior to finding her
in that horrible, twisting, stumbling state was that she didn't want
to start eating her twice-a-day soup. I'd have to tempt her by
putting the soup on my fingers, and then she'd eat. I think she was
queasy/nauseous from the dizziness starting.
Good luck, and keep us posted,
-Pam.
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