kidney failure?

Question
QUESTION: Hi Cassie,

I am from Romania, so excuse from the very start my bad English. I am the owner of a ferret male, 2.5 years old, who lately (meaning in the last week, as far as I have noticed) started to change behaviour. At first, he stopped playing around with my other pet, Maya (a baby mink), he became very sleepy and apathetic. Two nights ago, I also saw him vomiting. I thought he got stressed out by Maya, because she is hyper and always desperate to play, but today I understood there is something else wrong with him. He was barely able to walk, always resting his head on the floor after one or two steps and taking a very strange body position, with the forehead on the ground, legs gathered together under his body and his back somehow upwards. Also a bad breath. I understood he was in pain, so I took him immediately to the vet.

The vet told me that he has renal failure for sure, that his breath smells like urine and he made some injections with fluids, diuretics and steroids (hope I am not wrong about the last one). Anyway, tomorrow he will make some blood tests to understand the problem more accurately.

After I returned from the vet, I did some research on my own over the internet and found another disease, ulcer, which gives similar symptoms.

Ferret is not such a common pet over here and many vets have 0 experience with this animal. I found my vet after one year of desperate search and he really helped me out until now, but still I have some doubts regarding the cure he will apply or even 100% real diagnosis.
I need you to help me out here with some information reagarding this kidney failure. I read many things and what I understood was that the kidney tissue never recovers and fluids are the key. But is there any chance of survival, on short/long term? Does this require constant treatment?

I am very sad and scared right now. I just lost Pif's mother 4 months ago and it practically killed me. She was my first ferret, my first pet, my first everything. I just cannot bear the idea of losing her son too in such short time...i cannot even conceive this thought...

I will come back tomorrow with blood test results, maybe it will clear up some things.

Thanks a lot for your time. I really appreciate it!

ANSWER: I am very sorry to hear about your ferret.

Renal Failure is measured by measuring urine and blood parameters. When a ferret goes into renal failure an ammonia (or urine) smell from their breath is very evident. Unfortunately there is no cure for renal failure since as the kidneys wear down they are not replaced by more kidney tissue but rather scar tissue.

Early during the illness healthy kidney tissue is able to be treated using hypertrophy and function at a higher level but even over time higher functioning tissue will be lost. When 90% of renal (kidney) tissue is lost fatal renal failure occurs.

Depending on the stage of renal failure your ferret is in will determine treatment to sustain quality of life.

He/she will more than likely suggest a lower protein diet and periodically when the toxic level of substances in the blood large amounts of intravenous or subcutaneous fluids will be used to flush out some of these substances and decrease the levels.

There is no definitive time line of how long a ferret can live with renal failure. I have only encountered 2 one lived until the age of 7 and the other 4 1/2.

Some of the symptoms do match with Ulcers except the urine breath. Ulcers can cause foul smelling breath but not a urine or ammonia smell. If you have concerns you can request your vet to run any tests you would like they are there to help your ferret.

I am sorry again and I wish you luck

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Cassie,

The blood tests came today and they are pretty nasty:
Glucose 206 mg/dl
T-Cho  183 mg/dl
BUN  20 mg/dl
T-BIL  9.2 mg/dl
GOT  209 IU/L
GPT  149 IU/L
Creatinine   4.0 mg/dl

As you can see, the bilirubin is extremely high, normal value being somewhere around 0.2, also the creatinine, which we were all expecting.
He is still the same, althought the vet made some injections today and apparently i need to go every day to see him.
Do you know any specific disease that includes these abnormal values? Are these test results indicating to something in particular?

Thanks for the quick answer. It was really helpful and I shared it with my veterinarian. I just try to gather as much information as I can, maybe I can save the life of my little fuzzy :(  

Answer
I am not a vet so I am unsure about those results. Does your vet have any other suggestions as to what would cause these readings?  Do you know what kind of injection he was given? If your vet gave an injection he/she should have discussed with you what their thoughts are on what is wrong with your ferret.

I would post the results to http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/ there are quite a few vets in that group that could possibly pinpoint a specific illness or disease.