From:
Caitlyn Martin
Date: 2011-08-05 18:42:01 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] Insulinoma...
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Hi, Jeff, Melissa, and everyone else.
On 8/5/11, Jeff <inner.harmony@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 3) If he is on 3 mg of pred daily, and still in the 50 range as far as his
> blood glucose level, then there is a good chance that this is not just
> insulinoma. Pred should be able to keep his BG level in the normal range
> of 80 120.
In my experience that just isn't true in some ferrets. Some respond
well to prednisolone or prednisone and others just do not. In ferrets
who have not responded well to pred there wasn't generally anything
else wrong when the vet did surgery. Ker Avon was an extreme example.
No matter how much pred we gave him his blood glucose was in the 30s
and 40s. The last time I rushed him into the vet before surgery he
had crashed. The blood glucose level was so low he should have been
dead. It was 19. He had surgery a couple of days later, two large
nodules were found and removed, and he fully recovered. He never had
insulimona symptoms again and he succumbed to lymphosarcoma three and
a half years later. We had similar experiences with Podo, Kodo and
now with Zephyr.
I had one ferret, Pertwee, who was completely non-responsive to
prednisolone and that led to an Addisonian Crisis after his second
adrenal surgery. We had to use dexamethasone instead which worked
well for him. Pertwee never had insulinoma.
The irony here is that the one ferret who we did maintain on pred for
three years without surgery, Lady Ayeka, only went under the knife
when she developed adrenal disease as well at age six. The vet found
enlarged lymph nodes, a biopsy was done and it turned out she had
lymphoma. She came through surgery fine but only lived another six
months.
The point is that responsiveness to pred is, in my admittedly limited
experience, not a good indicator of what is actually wrong with a
ferret.
As always, YMMV :)
All the best,
Caity and the dynamic duo
Zephyr and Chin Soon
(p.s.: I'll do a longer post about Zephyr later. She is doing
amazingly well after a couple of crises related to her third degree
A/V node heart block.)
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