my ferret has insulinoma. my vet has me treating him with pred twice a day. he has been on this treatment for months and doing ok as long as he eats enough. his appetite is good and he has gained a lot of weight. all sugar is eliminated for the last year. he eats marshall farms dry and duck soup daily. treats are chicken liver, no sugar.  all has been fine until today. he had his medicine and ate a bowl of duck soup. i went to check on him later and he was in his bed but his lips were curled back, he was drooling and making weird hissing noises. he was not moving other than an occasional twitch. i laid him in my lap and put nutrical on his gums and in his mouth and waited. nothing happened. this was different than any other time his blood sugar was low. i guessed it was a seizure because of the involuntary movement and the stoned look. call ahead and immediately took him to the vet. they immediately tried the same thing i did only getting sugar and nutrients into him with a tube. he had stopped the lip curling on the way to the vet. nothing happened. we waited and gave him more nutrients. nothing happened. hour or more later he slowly came around. he is still at the vet for observation and care. will get him back tomorrow unless there is another episode. my questions are: why did he have the seizure? he had had his medication and high protein meal an hour before. he had never had a seizure before. i dont like feeling helpless. how am i supposed to manage this and maintain his quality of life? thanks in advance for any help.

Shelley

what was dosage on preds?  How many times a day.  When are you giving his meds?

1/4 of a 5mg tablet twice a day. i do it at the same time daily. 10am and 9pm. he eats immediately after taking the pred. he eats great! he has access to kibble all day and a bowl of duck soup twice a day. we also eat chicken or turkey baby food a couple of times a week. thanks for your interest.

anything you can do to iincrease protein intake is helpful.  otherwise, pred is the med.  Prednilsolone is prefered, as prednisone has to be broken down by the liver into prednisolone.  Pred doses can be adjusted as needed.  Best wishes.  you should get a BG meter and check BG levels every 2 weeks.  

THE DOOKS OF HAZARD

another thing you might want to look into is having the meds in liquid form.  Liquid form means that the doseage is exact every time; in the case of pills, if you are splitting them, you may not be giving the enough one time, and too much the next.  This not only has to do with the size of the pill, but the contents of the piece you are giving.

Our experience with insulinoma is that we increase the prednisolone when needed, and directed by a vet.  It isnt' a one time doseage, it will increase throughout the course of the disease.  You can also ask for stronger concentrations so that they are not filling their tummies up with meds, but have moer room for food.

You can change the doseage to 3x per day, as opposed to twice a day.  That evens out the eds, but also gives more feeding times.  We worked during the day, but whenever we could (weekends, days off, etc) we'd use a 3x per day schedule.

The last thing you can do is add DIAZOXIDE in addition to pred.  Both meds work on insulinoma in different ways, and we've had good experience doing both.

Hope this helps.

In addition, another easy thing to do is to have multiple food bowls throughout the cage.  Make it easy for him to eat when he wants, and to also wake up to the smell of food and want to eat.  We would also sprinkle kibble in sleep sacks, hammocks, and beds to make it easy for little midnight snacks.

As an aside, it is always important that your little one eats.  Have you tried adding a different kibble to the Marshalls?  If Marshalls is all will eat when adding new food, then its important to not change.  However, if you can add a different food, that might be helpful.  The reason why I say this is because Marshalls contains Brewers Yeast.  Brewers Yeast actually LOWERS blood glucose, so isn't advantageous to ferrets with insulinoma.  But, as I said before, it is more important that he eats, so keep the Marshalls as his kibble if he will only eat that.

Our pharmacist told me that the pills that are scored so they can be split are supposed to be made so the medication is evenly distributed.  But, when you split it there are always crumbs, and if you split it more than once it's pretty hard to get even pieces.  We did well with it, but liquid must be easier.  I'm not sure if it's cheaper.

THE DOOKS OF HAZARD

I can definitely do a blood meter, thanks. Will ask my vet about getting one.

Liquid pred is a good idea. Will ask my vet for sure. I also work which is why I only give meds twice a day. Asked my vet about an increase and he didn't want to do it. I already have food on every level of the cage. "Frazier" now prefers the duk soup mix and doesn't want the dry kibble anymore. I have been pulverizing the kibble and mixing with the duk soup. He eats like a horse but turns his nose up at the dry food now. I think that hurts him during the day.
 Will also research the other medication you mentioned. 
He came home from the vet today and so far is doing fine. Thank you for your help. I don't know anyone else in the area with ferrets or ferret experience. I have been on my own with ferrets now for 13 yrs.

I am open to giving other foods but I'm a label reader and the other ferret foods offered here in pensacola  are worse than Marshall's. It is the only one offered with meat as the first ingredient and no added sugar. Of the others I have tried neither of my ferrets would eat. 
I feed my cats purina one indoor formula with chicken as the main ingredient. My ferrets love it and would eat eat every time they leave the cage if I didn't pick it up and put it away first.

I used a pill cutter with a sharp blade. Most of the time the cuts were clean but you are correct, occasionally one would crumble. From there I crushed it with w pill crusher and added a little ferretone. He licks it right up like it caviar!

the other ferret foods offered here in pensacola  are worse than Marshall's.

You may want to look into online stores - they tend to be cheaper than the brick and mortar stores.  Or look at the cat aisle, and visit the small independant pet stores (not petco/petsmart) to see what they offer.  Check out this food guide, it is also pinned to the top of the food section of the forum:  http://moredooks.herobo.com/search.php?chart=ferret 

Our pharmacist told me that the pills that are scored so they can be split are supposed to be made so the medication is evenly distributed.

Are the pills scored 4 ways?  she is giving 1/4 of a pill each dose.

no, just one score.  we got the 5 mg tabs as they cost the same as the lower dose. we started with 1/4 pill.

@  Shelleygage

we did get a pill cutter and it worked fine for splitting in half.  You can get a Tru2Go meter at walgreen for $10 with 10 strips.  replacement strips are about $1 each.  A lot of ferrets can adjust to a lower blood glucose.  Once Kahlua was diagnosed, with a BG of 28, she lived another 8-9 months and it never got above the 40s.  She was 8 1/2 when she passed.

THE DOOKS OF HAZARD

I also live in Pensacola, and my ferret was just diagnosed with insulinoma a couple of days ago. I went on wag.com and bought a grain free ferret food called Evo. As you have stated all of the foods here in Pensacola are bad for ferrets, but it's really not much more expensive to order the food online. There are some stores where if you spend 50 dollars it's free shipping. So if you bought 3 bags of food you could get free shipping. Just a thought. :)

Hi there! I just saw your post. I did buy evo online for my ferrets.  They aren't crazy about it. I ground it up into a powder then made a soup out of it. It's the only way they'll eat it now. It's kind of frustrating.