sick?

[Deleted]

yea i think so. the vet is keeping her over night.

[Sherry]

Poor baby girl! At least you know what's wrong now, and it can be treated! Heliobacter Pylori bateria is what's involved with ulcers. It sounds like this was caught before that happened, so that's a good thing!

[Heather]

At least you know what it is. This is easily treated with antibiotics and some tummy meds. It takes awhile but its one of the cheaper diseases to treat (thank goodness because it's so common in ferrets) and once they get started on the medication they're usually feeling better within days. The most important thing...don't stop the medication...not for anything. Giving the meds is a pain, they don't like the taste but if you shorten up the treatment the ulcers only come back again.
Good luck, keep us posted and let us know when she gets to come home again
ciao

[Deleted]

ok. thanks guys she is coming home tonight i believe. i can't wait to get her back,

[Deleted]

she home
the unhappy bit is that i have to syringe feed her, and also giver her four medications. three are for 21 days, oh dear, and the other is the pain medication.
one of the medications smells like banana's and is yellow, so it reminds me of the stuff i used to take as a kid

her stitches are awful lookin, and she's on cage rest for 14 days.

[Sherry]

Poor baby girl At least she's home now! Do you know how to do a "ferret burrito" if you need to in order to get her meds into her?

[Heather]

Poor wee thing. A healing candle is still lit for your little one. Give her a gentle hug and a kiss from me and tell her she's a brave little girl
ciao

[Deleted]

thank you, i will.
I'm staying home with her today. she's not really eating, so i have to syringe feed her baby food, which i don't think she likes, so it's worse. and to add on that she's dehydrated i believe, so i have to give her water pretty much every hour. so I'm guessing all my teachers will hate me on monday. since i only went yesterday, and only for two of my classes.

she's shivering a lot, so i gave her a beanie bag thing, that you can warm up in the microwave, and i have a heater near the cage for her. so I'm hoping that will help lots.

[Deleted]

A couple of quick notes;

Regarding killing all the bacteria.....the vaseline is not selective about which bacteria are killed. SO all types of bacteria are killed. Some types of bacteria will be harder to kill than others for a handful of reasons. and I certainly don't know whether the vaseline is just "sweeping out" most bacteria or suffocating only certain types, etc. I imagine it works in several ways and differently (an to different degrees) on different types of bacteria.
ALso, the intestinal tract has a very interesting lining in that most of it has a complex, mucoid lining that's kind of "one with the digestive tissue itself". This mucoid coating is embedded with all kinds of bacteria and probably stuff like giardia, and other things. So, with this mucoid lining, you'll never get rid of all bacteria (giardia, etc) completely - not even with meds.


Technical trivia-
In ferrets, the actual helicobacter type that ferrets get is called H. mustelae. H. Pylori is the human variety.... the two bacteria strains are very, very similar, so you will commonly hear people refer to H. Pylori in the ferret world because we know more about the human form of the bacteria and ho to deal with it.

The yellow med is most likely albon. I believe this may be a sulfur-based medication. ALbon is commonly used to treat clostridium. There's a very good chance that the bloat involves either a mix of or a different type of "gut bug". So, I would feel comfortable with the treatment approach of using lots of different meds (even though it's a pain in the butt!.

-jennifer

[Deleted]

it is, because I'm pretty sure two of the medications taste really really bad, by her reactions.

i believe she is dehydrated by the scruff method, so i've been giving her around 2ml of water every hour. should i be giving her more water?