What causes adrenal ferrets to pass?

[Deleted]

What is it that causes most adrenal ferrets to pass? Is it the adrenal itself, or some other disease or complications?

[goingpostal]

Well one of mine was PTS after injury/stroke, another had an adrenalectomy at 1.5 years and adrenal never reoccured, lymphoma and insulinoma took her at 4. My current adrenals are Pip, going on one year diagnosed/lupron who doesn't seem ill at all and Craven who started showing signs last Sept, no reaction to lupron so he is on nothing until I get him the des. implant. Pip is probably about 4 and Craven most likely around 7 based on teeth. No prostate issues with either so far which seems to be the real issue causing adrenal males to be PTS eventually.

[Deleted]

What is PTS?

[Heather]

PTS= put to sleep
My understanding is adrenal is rarely fatal, like aids (you don't die from aids, you die from complications of aids, usually pneumonia). Nicodemus was adrenal but he suffered from recurring ulcers and because of the constant nutritional deprivation eventually suffered organ failure. Loki suffered renal failure. Mad Max suffered from bladder cancers. Pooka is suffering from organ failure. It's a cruel disease. Some ferrets lasting and living a good long life despite the diagnosis, others suffering from severe IBD, lowered immune systems and organ failure. These little ones also seem to be more prone to lymphomas too.
ciao

[miamiferret2]

It just gets worse and worse until you can't do anything to help anymore. Muscle wasting gets so bad they become skin and bones and can barely walk, serious gastrointestinal problems, no appetite, intermittent diarrhea, malabsorption of food, bladder issues (including cancer), enlarged prostate, bladder/urinary infections, prostate cysts. Inability to urinate. It is a slow wasting disease and your ferret becomes a complete train wreck. Late to end stage adrenal is bad. They usually have to be put down because they become everything becomes unmanageable and they start to suffer and have zero quality of life. I am still very traumatized from my last adrenal ferret. Poor little guy. It was h*ll. worse than when I've dealt with insulinoma.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the input. I know adrenal is truly a terrible disease

[miamiferret2]

I hate to sound negative because i'm not. It is what it is. I choose to own these animals and they tend to have certain problems. It is the symptoms that require you to put the ferret to sleep. I have heard of the adrenal tumors rupturing but that has never happened to one of mine.

[Heather]

I have to admit that to my knowledge none of my adrenal fuzzes have had malignant adrenal tumours. Some have developed tumours in other areas of their little bodies that proved to be fatal. The one that I'm not sure about because we didn't go any farther than his bladder was Mad Max. He did not respond to lupron when it was administered and it is suggested that when a fuzz doesn't respond to the lupron (this is the primary stage) that the tumours are malignant.
ciao

[miamiferret2]

My vet said if the bladder looks large and has thin walls (like it is not a defined line around the bladder in the x-ray) then that can be one of the indicators that the ferret has bladder cancer. It happens with adrenal ferrets more. especially males. Unfortunately not much you can do about that. You just let their life run its course and put them down when it gets bad.

[Deleted]

I have heard of people giving saw palmetto to male ferrets with adrenal to help with the urinary tract problems. Has anyone used it with success?

[miamiferret2]

I have used saw palmetto extract and nettle extract. It didn't work. I used them for about 6 months then I had to use propecia and flutamide. I'm not saying it doesn't work period -it just hasn't worked for me. If you try these, buy the liquid extracts that are alcohol free and sugar free.

[miamiferret2]

I guess I should disclose how many ferrets I've tried these on. I have tried saw palmetto on 4 (or 5?) ferrets w/ enlarged prostates in the past. So my test group is somewhat small. If faced with another enlarged ferret prostate in the future, I will again use saw palmetto and nettle as a first attempt at treatment of symptoms. But there are a lot of articles out there that say it doesn't work. My uncle claims that it did shrink his prostate. Maybe it affects humans differently?

[Heather]

I think the saw palmetto does work but it's like melatonin, you have to catch it early and you're going to get a huge variation. I, also don't have a large population to draw conclusions on. Mad Max so far has been my only male to block up. Mad Max seemed to respond to it very well the year before he passed. Now one of the problems that I'm encountering when saying yes this worked no this didn't is often there are other players in the background. When I first started treating Max, with melatonin, I also started using the saw palmetto. Whether it was just the melatonin, or the combination I don't know, but we had no further problems until a year later, actually a bit longer. Then we tried the lupron with no success at all, so we moved to finasteride which appeared to work for about 3 months. He then started having severe difficulties and I couldn't even express his bladder. We tried a couple of different measures to relieve the pressure and when xrayed, there was a large greyish foggy mass. My vet stated there was little she felt she could do and to prolong the issue was really fair, but she would let me think about it. Things like this don't take much thinking really, Max was already sedated, it didn't take much. The postmorten showed a large fibrous mass, that we decided that considering what it looked like was probably cancerous
ciao

[miamiferret2]

That is exactly what the cancerous bladder looked on the xray. a big grey foggy mass. My poor fuzzy wuzzy
may he rest in peace.