Spike II
Monday 24.11.03
we got a
rescue ferret. On the 15th I had a visitor, Pat, a lady who really
wants a ferret and was hoping to get one off me. And a week later I got
an e-mail from some acquaintances, Leann and Joe, could I take their
friend’s ferret Spike in. They knew those people and
their son had a ferret, a biting one. Spike was never let out, never
handled and fed cheap cat food. So I thought “yeah, a biter,
I can deal with that, I bet he doesn’t even bite and then I
can give him to Pat” so I said I would take him in and he
came Monday. When Leann and Joe arrived I took him out of the carrier
with my hands covered with the sleeves of my pullover and he
didn’t try to bite at all- so I uncovered my hands... Big
mistake, he locked onto my right hand straight away so then I had to
stick the little finger of my left hand into his mouth to get him to
release my right hand. My hands were covered in little puncture
wounds... So Leann, Joe and I went into the lounge and let Spike have a
run and Leann said that she looked after Spike 3 months ago and he
didn’t bite at all so we thought Leann should try to handle
him. So after having tea (Pete had got back home after his German
lesson in the meantime), she went upstairs and as she got to the top of
the stairs, Spike attacked her, he just attacked her hand and she
wasn’t even trying to pick him up. So when Joe, Pete and I
were on our way up, we found Leann standing on the toilet. :-) Spike
was still at the top of the stairs, ready to attack us, he really
wanted to bite my legs. I just ran down the stairs, Pete followed me.
Joe had wellies on, gloves and thick clothes so he picked Spike up (who
bit his glove) and put him into his cage. Later on that night I got
Spike back out of his cage and he left a few more bite marks on my
hands... I then decided to handle him wearing gloves.
For the next few
days I handled Spike a lot, I picked him up with one hand that was
covered by a glove and then I stroked him with my other uncovered
hand.
The following
Friday he went to the vets to be castrated and he was so
happy when he got back, I let him out straight away when we got back
from the vets and for the first time he ran around and looked happy.
Before he spent most of the time in his cage when it was his time out,
he was so protective of his cage. Only came out when I was around and
then only to terrorise me. From Friday night on I haven’t
handled him with gloves anymore, I mainly cover my hands with the
sleeves of my pullover and handle him that way and when he settles down
I stroke him and even hold him with my bare hands. I think
we’re getting somewhere. Strange noises still scare him or
sudden movements and then he will try and bite. I do wear thick bed
socks now that I pull over the ends of my jogging suit bottoms so he
doesn’t bite my legs and feet. But his toilet habits are
amazing! He only had 1 pee next to his toilet the evening he came and
since then he’s used the toilets 100%! In his cage and out of
his cage! I’ve never seen this, he has no idea what a toilet
is, he was never toilet trained, especially not in a house! All my
rescues so far had loads of accidents on the floor and all over their
cage when they first arrived but Spike’s 100% clean. He likes
the raw meat as well and eats mince and chunks and he’s even
had lamb chunks so that’s good, too. :-)
Oh, if I
hadn’t taken him, he would have been killed, either hit over
the head or thrown in with some terriers to make them vicious... I hate
the thought that there are people who do such a thing, especially
making dogs vicious for hunting by throwing live animals in with them.
That is so sick. What goes on in their heads???!!! :-(
For the last few
days,
since the 29th/30th of November, Spike has been playing a lot. He loves
ping pong balls, we have some coloured ones from the pet shop. Spike
plays with them for hours and hours and the picture below shows where
he plays, in the hall in the bubble wrap paper and he pushes his balls
around and carries them and doesn't seem to get tired of it...
Update 28/02/04
Must write a
Spikey
update! I can’t describe how special Spike has become. And to
think that a month ago I almost offered Spike to a friend (not because
I didn't want Spike, a friend lost one of his ferrets and had 2 jills
left, the one didn't play much, the other used to play with the ferret
that had died and now didn't have a play friend and I thought Spike
would be ideal for her) and I’d already written the e-mail
and told Pete and he had tears in his eyes and said “no, you
can’t let Spike go”. So I deleted the paragraph
about letting my friend have Spike. And I’m sooo glad I did!
Spike just loves being with me and he goes mental at night,
he’s still out when I get ready for bed and he whizzes
through the rooms, dooking, always coming to see me again. He is just
so excited when I’m with him or somewhere upstairs that he
becomes so vocal and excited and runs all over the place. I can wrestle
with him with my hands and he doesn’t hurt, he barely bites
anyway when I wrestle with him. And he loves being cuddled and kissed
and when I put him on the floor after a cuddle, he runs around all
happy and excited again. :-) But you would have to see him to
appreciate how wonderful and special he has become. And every day I
think back of how he was, attacking me all the time and being really
horrible and me being so scared of him that the word
“euthanasia” crossed my mind more than once. It has
just shown me that you can change the worst biters. And that they turn
into the most wonderful ferrets of all! :-)
Update
At the beginning of 2004, I tried to put him in a group with Willow,
Tara, Riley and Wesley but Wesley attacked Spike really badly so there
was no way he could go into that group...
Then I happened to put my first 3 groups together (Fox & Reno;
Rose, Jasmine, Hobo, Gremlin & Bobby; Willow, Tara, Riley
& Wesley) and I didn't want to put Baby and Dana (who were with
Fox and Reno) in with the big group because they were elderly so they
went with Spike. But Baby and Dana didn't really play much with young
Spike- so I decided to get some
friends for him and in June 2004 I got Leo
and Piper. I waited a little while until Leo and Piper grew
bigger and then put Spike with them and he adored the babies from the
very start and played really gently with them. :-)
Baby died in July 2004 and Dana died in April 2005 so from then on
Spike was just with Leo and Piper.
Update- Spike's insulinoma (and surgery)
March 2006- Spike has become ill. 2 or 3 times he
had a funny turn. He was fine one moment and the next he
could barely walk and was stumbling around. The first time I
saw this I got really frightened and thought it may be the heart.
Went straight to the vets but his heart was fine and then it
didn't happen again for a while.
July/ August- It is now obvious that something is wrong, Spike went off
his
dry food and only wants minced/ ground chicken and then he has put on a
lot of weight. Around August time I realised he has low blood glucose
and so he was started on a low dose of pred.
September- Spike has some really horrible low blood
sugars. He gets food about 9.00 a.m. and gets time out with
his group at around 9.30 and then he was either very quiet or would
suddenly have hind end weakness. I let him out in the garden
a few times to get him moving and then he was excited and ran around
and then would suddenly crash. Where he could barely
move. So I measured his blood glucose when he was really bad
and it was 28.8 mg/dl. Another time he was feeling bad I
measured it and it was 19.8 mg/dl. Yet 4 hours after food the
blood glucose stabilises and is around 70-80 mg/dl. I
don’t know what to make of it. Jade who has
insulinoma has a steady low blood glucose in the 60’s and so
has Gremlin. But Spike’s BG is up and down like a
yo-yo. He’s on 0.5 mg pred for the time being,
morning and night. And after food he gets a dollop of high
calorie sort of sugary vitamin paste. (Which is normally *not* done
with insulinomic ferrets but Spike was different.) With this
“treatment” he doesn’t show the symptoms
of low sugars anymore and is *a lot* more active. Just
don’t know what’s going on with him. He
had a blood test with protein electrophoresis and the creatinine was
high at 1.18 mg/dl. Not sure what that means as Urea (BUN) is
normal. Lymphocytes were high, too. And with the
protein electrophoresis the gamma globulins were greater than 20% of
the TP. But TP was normal. I’m just
taking it one day at a time as he seems to be doing okay now.
October- Spike deteriorated badly middle of October.
I’d been trying to make my mind up whether to operate or
not. I’ve never had insulinoma surgery done and was
scared and didn’t want anything to go wrong or for Spike to
be in pain. But he went downhill so much, I kept upping his
pred and he’d be better for a few weeks and then he would
have constant low sugars again. I think beginning of October
I upped the pred to 1mg morning and night. It worked for a
little while as in he was able to run around a little but then his BG
would plummet and soon his BG was constantly low and I’m
talking about the low 20’s (20-25mg/dl). So I
decided to have an operation done but was still scared and then I was
in town on Wednesday the 18th and I stood there eating a baguette when
Michaela spotted me and came over (she was on her lunch break) and we
talked and she said that she’d be off for 1 1/2 weeks from
Friday on. So I got really scared that I put off
Spike’s operation for so long and now I was at the point
where I thought he wouldn’t survive another 2 weeks.
So Thursday 19th I had Spike out in the morning and he was stumbling
around and salivating and looked in a really bad way. So I
phoned the vets and asked to speak straight to Michaela. I
just asked whether she had a lot of work to do and asked if there was
any way she could open up Spike. I said it wouldn’t
matter if there was no way she could do it and I would understand but I
just had to ask. I felt quite uncomfortable asking but I had
to. She said she didn’t have time but since Spike
was so bad it would be treated like an emergency so she said to come in
at 2.00 p.m. and that she would operate. I really thought we
would open him up and that his pancreas and maybe liver would be full
of tumours like it happened with Mason and that we would put him to
sleep. But Michaela found one obvious nodule and removed
it. The rest of the pancreas looked okay. But the
tumour looked like it had invaded some of the surrounding tissue so
Michaela didn’t just remove the nodule but also surrounding
tissue. I was just sat down during the procedure, Michaela
was in a hurry and did everything quickly and I thought Spike would not
survive the operation. As far as I know, Michaela
didn’t even take the spleen out of the abdominal cavity, she
just pulled out the pancreas and palpated it and removed the
tumour. Spike BG was 25.2 before the operation so he was put
on a 5% glucose drip and
he wasn't intubated but just masked
because Michaela wanted him done as quickly as possible. Not
only because she didn’t have time but also because
Spike’s condition was so critical.
I left him at the vets and fetched him in the evening. He was
still on a drip and looked out of it but he did have a lot of
painkiller. And then I was scared that he’d develop
pancreatitis or peritonitis. I was aware that the ferret
pancreas is a lot tougher than in other animals but there is still a
chance that complications can occur. Then Michaela said he
would need a low fat diet and gave me Hill’s i/d I
think. I tried to feed him that Friday morning but Spike just
gagged. I wasn’t sure whether he was feeling ill or
whether he didn’t like the food (or both). He was
supposed to have his drip (which continued to work fine during the
night) removed Friday midday so I took him to the vets and I saw Brenda
the anaesthetist, she was supposed to take the drip out but I asked her
to do a BG test first. I thought theoretically the drip
should stay in while Spike wasn’t eating, on the other hand
the BG could go very high and then he wouldn’t need a glucose
drip. So Mel, a big animal vet, came in to take
blood. Spike was so good and held so still and Mel had no
problem taking blood. The BG was 448.2mg/dl
(high!). So the drip came out (and Spike again was sooo good
and held so still) and Brenda gave me a bag with a saline solution to
inject him with if needed.
At home I pureed some skinless chicken breast for Spike because he is
used to eating raw chicken and I thought that is also low fat and
something Spike knows and I offered him some after midday, sort of 24
hours after his operation- and he ate. I fed him 3 little
meals ever day for about 5 days, at day 4 I also started to slowly
mixed his chicken breast with his usual ground chicken/ beef mix and by
day 6 he was back to 2 meals a day which he prefers. He is
used to getting a tummy full of food morning and night (and of course
he can eat some dry food if he wants to) and didn’t like
getting 3 small portions.
But at least his recovery was excellent. I had pain relief
for him, Vetergesic (buprenorphine) and injectable generic
Rimadyl. I gave Vetergesic Thursday night, Friday morning and
Friday night and the Rimadyl Friday midday and Saturday midday, I think
Sunday, too, but not sure. But from Friday on, Spike never
showed any pain so I was happy. My worst fear was that he
could end up in pain and suffer but he was just doing so
good. I think I kept him in his little recovery cage for 4
days, then I let him out for short supervised periods and from day 7 I
let him out with Leo and Piper. I was scared that Leo and
Piper may not recognize Spike and start bullying him but luckily they
had a quick sniff and decided he was still Spike and that they knew and
liked him. ;-) I had had this problem before where
one ferret had an anaesthetic for a dental or something and when I put
him back with his group, he was bullied. They probably
couldn’t smell his scent because he smelled of gas...
Oh, by day 5 I also realized that Spike was glued.
;-) I hadn’t noticed that he didn’t have
stitches. ;-)
One weird thing that happened though was that Spike was incontinent for
about 2-3 days after the operation. This has also happened a
few times before. Ferret has a (long) anaesthetic for a
dental or something (longer than what you need for a simple blood test
or x-ray) and then is incontinent for the next 24-48 hours.
With Spike I had to change his bedding all through the day and night
because he just emptied his bladder in his sleep. No idea
why... The urine was just leaking out.
So anyway, Spike is *a lot* better than before. He is off his
pred and a lot more active. His BG would plummet after his
meals usually and then go up by midday but in the end it just stayed
low. Well I took him back to the vets on Wednesday 1st of
November and Michaela was very happy with him and tested his BG because
I asked and it was 64.8mg/dl. Not horrendously high but much,
much better. Plus his BG is stable and of course this is
without pred. Before the op his BG would have been more like
24.8 at the time we measured. As I said, Spike is a lot more
active and plays and dances with Leo and Piper so this is really
great. What is not so great is the pathology:
History
Pancreas
Diagnosis
Pancreatic Islet Cell Carcinoma
Prognosis
Very guarded
Histopathology report
DESCRIPTION: Pancreatic tissue -1 sample received; 1 section examined.
This section contains a highly cellular neoplasm approximately 1cm in
diameter. This is composed of cuboidal or polyhedral cells with a
moderate amount of pale, slightly vacuolated cytoplasm. The cells are
arranged chiefly as nests and cords, separated by a fine network of
fibrovascular tissue. There is moderate nuclear atypia and mitoses are
moderately frequent (up to 5 per high power field). The growth pattern
at the periphery of the tumour is moderately infiltrative and
occasional small clusters of neoplastic cells are apparently within the
lumina of lymphatic vessels. Excision of this individual tumour appears
complete, but this is probably of little consequence given that there
is evidence of lymphatic invasion.
DIAGNOSIS: Pancreatic islet cell carcinoma.
DISCUSSION: The appearance is consistent with a pancreatic islet cell
tumour and the degrees of nuclear atypia and mitotic activity together
with the infiltrative behaviour and evidence of lymphatic invasion
classify it as a carcinoma. According to most sources, pancreatic islet
cell tumours are the commonest neoplasms of ferrets. They arise mostly
from the beta cells and secrete insulin, hence their popular name of
"insulinoma". Clinical signs are referrable to hypoglycaemia. Adenomas
are generally small, well circumscribed and may be cured by excision,
but carcinomas tend to be infiltrative, sometimes multiple and
eventually metastasize to the draining lymph nodes, liver and sometimes
other abdominal viscera. The prognosis, therefore, is very guarded.
Peak prevalence of these tumours is between 4 and 7 years old and there
is no sex predilection, although there is a suggestion that neutered
animals are more frequently affected than intact ones.
So now I don’t know what to expect... But at least
we have bought him some more time and I hope it’s a long
time...
November- End of November Spike is doing really well. He is
not showing
symptoms of low BG, I have not measured it recently but he seems
okay.
On 11 April 2007, Spike had a BG crash. I had been
worried about him for a while, there were some hardly noticeable signs
that his insulinoma may be coming back. Just split seconds
where he’d stand there funny or have a slight
wobble. But he’s been okay, just a few days ago he
played so much, took a toy off Poppy and took it indoors and then Poppy
fetched it back out and Spike took it again to put it indoors and that
went on for ages and he was absolutely fine. But the last few
nights I saw him paw at his mouth a few times and tonight he was a
bit wobbly and pawed at his mouth and then he suddenly got so weak that
he just fell over on his side. He was shaky and just ran
indoors and laid down on a bed. Completely crashed.
A bit later he managed to get up the stairs, climbed up one of the cat
frames and climbed into a bed with his last strength. So
I’m quite shocked how he suddenly crashed like this and I
don’t know what to do... The pathology
said that it was a carcinoma with evidence of lymphatic invasion and
they said prognosis was very guarded. That was last October I
think so 6 months ago.
April- Sometime in April I had to take Spike out of his group because
Leo was being so aggressive. His aggressiveness was towards the ferrets
from the other groups so when other ferrets were out, Leo got restless
and paced along the cage front and wanted to get out to get the other
ferrets. And because he couldn't get out, he would have a go at Piper
and Spike if they were up and by his side. And when Leo had a go at
Spike, Spike's BG would crash. I had taken in Honey
on the 25th of March and Spike already had time out with her and Honey
was so sweet with him and protective of him so I put Spike with Honey.
07 May- Spike had a horrible low sugar today, he was just lying on his
back and when I picked him up he was as limp as a rag doll and
drooling. For a minute I thought he may have an abscess in
his mouth because of all the stuff around his mouth but it was just
saliva. I gave him paste and then fed him his meat.
It's just so odd, this tumour (like the last one) seems to release a
lot of insulin every now and again so he can be stable one minute and
crash badly the next- out of the blue. Oh, and he is on 1/2
mg of pred bid.
26 May- I've increased Spike's pred to 1mg twice a day. It
doesn't seem to make a difference. He is fine most of the
time but morning and night he crashes. Night worse than
morning. Last night he was bad again and a few nights ago he
was so out of it that I had him by my bed all night and kept checking
on him, I was scared he'd die. I did give him glucose but he
barely swallowed. At this rate he'll need surgery within 2
weeks. Oh, I may try diazoxide.
01 June 2007- I lost Spike today. I had a vet appointment and
thought
of asking about diazoxide. But then he was so flat and had a
bad low BG that Michaela suggested letting him go. This
completely threw me so I asked
her to open him up first in case it is something we can fix, like just
one tumour like last time. So she opened him up in the
afternoon and it looked like there was metastasis all throughout the
pancreas so we let him go. I took pictures but haven't looked
at them yet. There were red spots everywhere, they looked
like new blood vessels forming, maybe for the insulinomas? I
don't know. I don't know if it was the edge of the pancreas
or the intestine but Michaela said there was a lot of congestion, both
blood and lymphatic congestion.
I was crying all day long. I started crying in the waiting
room in the morning before I saw Michaela for the
consultation. Then I was crying when I saw Michaela, I was
crying my eyes out on the way home, then on the way home after I let
Spike go, then at home. I have found this loss very hard, he
was a special ferret like Willow. Then I beat myself up, I
wish I had said that I wanted to try diazoxide first and if that
doesn't work or stops working, then exploratory and possible
euthanasia. I feel like he could still be here, maybe the
diazoxide would have helped.
I think the hardest thing was that I never got to hold him a last time
or say good-bye. I left him at the vets in the morning and
when I returned, he was already anaesthetised on the table...
I didn't have any tissues sent to the lab because it was
obvious what he died of- pancreatic
islet cell carcinoma.
Spike was the most loving and amazing ferret. Not a day
passed when I didn't think of how vicious he was at first and how sweet
and cuddly he'd become. Willow and Spike were my faviourite ferrets in
the last few years. I've been feeling very low with both of them gone...
Before
Willow died, Pete took pictures of Willow and me and Spike and me for
an article in some magazine. I never got to see the magazine
with the article but when the woman who wrote it sent me the article, I
was really upset because the way she wrote about me just wasn't me.
But at the end of the day I had some pictures of my favourite
ferrets and me that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
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