Post by spacecore63 on Jun 18, 2018 9:15:38 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
My boy Donnie has just been diagnosed with kidney disease, and its not looking good.
We've had him for about a year after he was surrendered to a rescue group by his previous owner, and all we know is he is probably 4-5 years old. No clue how accurate that is though.
Anyway, we aren't sure if its acute failure, or something thats been slowly getting worse over time as he's always been much much lazier than my other ferret. We ended up taking him to the vet on Tuesday after we noticed him eating dramatically less, losing a bit of weight and not wanting to play at all over the weekend. Vet took bloods and his protein levels were off the charts, so we left him at the vets for the day and they gave him sub q fluid. We've continued giving him sub q fluid at home (although we've only been able to get maybe 10ml in per day which is the minimum the vet recommended). He's also not at all interested in the renal cat food he's meant to have so he's just been having chicken and mince stuff (all raw) as per usual.
We ended up taking him back to the vet on Friday morning because we noticed a big bloody clot (bright red, so at least partially undigested) in his stool. Vet put him on antibiotics as she didn't think it was necessarily related to his kidney issues.
It's Monday night here now, and I've just given him his antibiotics and some food. He's been drinking a ton of water in one go and peed twice while he was out wandering around, and his urine was almost completely clear (which in this case, I doubt is a good sign). His stools have also been very tiny despite him eating more or less a regular amount over the last few days, and they still had bits of blood in them.
We're going back to get his blood redone later in the week. He doesn't really seem to be getting any worse, but he also isn't improving like we'd hoped and sub q fluids have been really difficult as he's still putting up a h*ll of a fight. Basically if he hasn't improved by the next lot of bloods, we really aren't sure what to do.
Do we keep giving him fluids and medication (which he thoroughly hates) in order to prolong his life (even though he's no longer interested in playing and just sleeps all the time), or do we stop treatment and just let it take its course?
I realise the prognosis isn't good and you guys can't make all the hard decisions for us, but I'm just wondering whether anybody has any experience with this or any suggestions/advice?
Thanks in advance
My boy Donnie has just been diagnosed with kidney disease, and its not looking good.
We've had him for about a year after he was surrendered to a rescue group by his previous owner, and all we know is he is probably 4-5 years old. No clue how accurate that is though.
Anyway, we aren't sure if its acute failure, or something thats been slowly getting worse over time as he's always been much much lazier than my other ferret. We ended up taking him to the vet on Tuesday after we noticed him eating dramatically less, losing a bit of weight and not wanting to play at all over the weekend. Vet took bloods and his protein levels were off the charts, so we left him at the vets for the day and they gave him sub q fluid. We've continued giving him sub q fluid at home (although we've only been able to get maybe 10ml in per day which is the minimum the vet recommended). He's also not at all interested in the renal cat food he's meant to have so he's just been having chicken and mince stuff (all raw) as per usual.
We ended up taking him back to the vet on Friday morning because we noticed a big bloody clot (bright red, so at least partially undigested) in his stool. Vet put him on antibiotics as she didn't think it was necessarily related to his kidney issues.
It's Monday night here now, and I've just given him his antibiotics and some food. He's been drinking a ton of water in one go and peed twice while he was out wandering around, and his urine was almost completely clear (which in this case, I doubt is a good sign). His stools have also been very tiny despite him eating more or less a regular amount over the last few days, and they still had bits of blood in them.
We're going back to get his blood redone later in the week. He doesn't really seem to be getting any worse, but he also isn't improving like we'd hoped and sub q fluids have been really difficult as he's still putting up a h*ll of a fight. Basically if he hasn't improved by the next lot of bloods, we really aren't sure what to do.
Do we keep giving him fluids and medication (which he thoroughly hates) in order to prolong his life (even though he's no longer interested in playing and just sleeps all the time), or do we stop treatment and just let it take its course?
I realise the prognosis isn't good and you guys can't make all the hard decisions for us, but I'm just wondering whether anybody has any experience with this or any suggestions/advice?
Thanks in advance
