From:
"Susan Holland"
Date: 2007-02-11 01:01:23 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re:Renal Disease/non-ferret vet question
To: <ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com>
I find myself faced with the same situation right now. I have a ferret that originaly came from a breeder. I received her through a rescue. Her date of birth is 3/17/01 and she is a late alter as well. She was always a robust ferret the head b**** of the ferret business. Over the last 6 months she has lost ALOT of weight and muscle. In October I noticed she had some dental disease, so I thought it was possibly caused by her teeth. She and her cage mates were also treated with a course of Albon since we were having some diarrhea in a few of them. I ran some minor bloodwork at that time but didn't notice anything off. I scraped her teeth, but did not have the equipment to polish them. I thought once her teeth were clean she would gain some weight. She progressed with a very healthy appetite....just like yours, with chicken gravy which they eat daily, but I haven't really noticed her eating much kibble. Her mouth smelled bad again and her teeth had built up a fair amount of tartar already. Oh, I forgot...we also did x-rays and an ultrasound in October to be sure there wasn't a whomping tumor or an obstruction. Nothing was found. So....yesterday I cleaned and polished her teeth and ran full bloodwork through a diagnostic lab. Some of her results are as follows: normals are in parenthesis.
BUN- 168 (10-33)
Creat- 6.8 (0.2-0.8)
Phosphorus- 12.3 (4.2-8.5)
Calcium 7.3 (7.7-11.0)
Glucose- 114 ( 80-120)
I wondered how her values could have gotten bad so fast so I looked back at her October bloodwork and realized that I misread her BUN then. I thought I read it as 35, but it actually was 135. A creatinine wasn't run at that time. So....I have just been doing minor supportive care for this time. Making sure that she eats her chicken gravy well and since I have been giving it twice daily, she seems to be doing well. I know that someone in the cage has been PU/PD ( drinking and peeing alot), but was not sure who it was. Now I know. Maybe we can keep in touch and share notes.
Susan Holland
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