The vet came with her mobile ultrasound gear and checked out Muis’s stomach yesterday afternoon and we got her back shortly afterwards.

As our vet was off duty, I spoke to one of the other vets and she said Muis has a 1 cm tumour on her pancreas … ONE CENTIMETER!!  My God, that seems a HUGE tumour
but there weren’t any other signs that the cancer had metastised so I guess that’s good news. Her right adrenal looked a little larger than the left one but no sign of trouble there …. yet!
My vet just rang me after conferring with Dave Neck, who’s the ferret expert in Perth. Apparently our ferrets have a far more aggressive form of insulinoma than those in the States and it’s something to do with the diet.
He’d just come back from a seminar on ferret medicine in Sydney and they had a link-up with ferret vets over in the US, so got to discuss this exact problem with the others.
Apparently our food has more protein, whereas the American ferrets’ diet has more carbohydrates, so the insulinomas that American ferrets have are operable with good outcomes, whereas that’s not the case with our babies.

At least that’s what I *think* it’s all about – I was too busy feeling depressed and not really listening to Fiona when she explained what the options were as it really didn’t seem like there was anything we could do to help Muis long-term so maybe I got the wrong end of the stick.

But for sure Fiona said that our insulinomas are more aggressive so surgery is not as successful as for American ferrets with insulinoma. Phooey :-(

He had said to Fiona that if it were his ferret, he wouldn’t put her through the trauma of an operation because the after effects could be fatal and there is no extra time gained by surgery. He thought it would be much kinder to the ferret to put her on prednisone from the beginning and that way I would have 12-18 months of relative good days with her, rather than a shaky 12 months after an operation.
If I had been told there was at least a 75% success rate after the operation, I think I would have decided to put her through surgery but the prognosis is so lousy that I couldn’t put her through that. Mind you, the operation ain’t cheap … $800-$1000 … and I’d just forked out $440 for the ultrasound alone.

Still, I reckon if we want to have pets we must give them the best life possible and if that means high vet bills, so be it.

My fingers are crossed that she has at least 18 good months with us … but who knows, maybe her cancer is not as aggressive as Dave thinks and maybe we’ll be able to have her with us for longer. I live in hope.

I talked about Devil’s Claw on my Insulinoma page but I’m finding it very hard to find that here in Perth. I’ll keep looking but since Australia is very tough on letting in certain herbs, etc, I don’t really fancy my chances. Such a shame, because I would have really loved to have tried that out on Muis to see if it would help her.
Anyway, I’m off to hospital with Monty tomorrow so will be offline for a few days. I’ve given Philip strict instructions to keep an eye on Muis and make sure she doesn’t have another blood sugar drop but I’m sure the medication will keep her well!
On a lighter note – Angus is obsessed with Monty and keeps stealing him off my bed to take him to his hidey hole for the moment!! Here are some pictures of where we’ve found Monty a couple of times this week … you just gotta wonder what’s in Angus’s mind sometimes :-D

Never mind “Where’s Wally”, or is it Waldo? … I think I should start a children’s book called “Where’s Monty”!

Ahhhh ferrets … gotta love ‘em! ;-) )

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Filed under: Ferret Illnesses • Insulinoma in Ferrets

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