Message Number: FHL8570 | New FHL Archives Search
From: "ldarkes2000"
Date: 2009-04-02 05:23:59 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Low blood sugar and irregular/low heart rate
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com

Hi all,
Our little girl, April is spending the night at our emergency vet's ICU. This evening (or I guess last night now)she was sleeping with her sister. When I picked her up, she intially seemed normal, but when I put her next to her food she fell over, then started panting, went limp and stopped breathing all together. We could not detect a heartbeat and thought she was gone, but tried blowing air into her (neither my husband or I know how to do CPR on a ferret, but will be asking our vet for lessons). I detected a faint heartbeat, and after I gave her a few more breaths, she started breathing on her own. We rushed her to our ER and they took her right back to try to stabilize. They found her blood glucose to be very low 51 and her heart rate irregular and also quite low 55ish. They are treating her overnight trying to get her bg up. It didn't go up much with the intial IV bolus of dextrose, only to around 60, but when I talked to the vet last around an hour ago, she w
as up to 71 and was moving around a bit and had eaten some AD via syringe very willingly -- a postive sign.
A little background: April came to us as a stray; it will be a year ago on Saturday. She is blind and deaf. We found early on that she had an irregular heart beat; however at the time the cardiologist did not believe any treatment was warranted based on her EKG. She has adrenal disease and is being treated with Lupron. Her last injection was in early February. She has never shown any indication of low blood sugar until tonight. We have had several ferrets over the years with insulinoma, so are familiar with the usual symtoms, but April had none of these. Does any of this make sense to any of you, as to what we could be dealing with here? It is hard to accept that she could go from acting like her normal self early in the day to this close to death, with nothing in between. If anyone has ideas or suggestions, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks for listening...Lucie





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