>Oh, and the adrenal surgery in TX, it appears that the best cost would
>be at Texas A&M for about $1,000-$1,500, with questionable success>
 
I just went through this last winter October-December.  My oldest ferret
was diagnosed in in October with adrenal disease and in December he had
surgery to remove his right adrenal gland.
 
If this is what your ferret has (it tends to be pretty obvious) then you
I recommend that you start researching about it...there are a lot of good
places on the web to get information about it.
 
About the price.  My vet (who is ferret knowledgable) was going to charge
me $900 or so (this was with a discount because I used to work for her
and got laid off).  I had never seen her do surgery for a ferret before
(I worked for her for 9 months) and some of the answer didn't match what
I had learned in my research.  I asked on FML regarding ferret vets that
were known excellent surgerons in a 4 state area (I live in upstate NY
near multiple state lines) and got some answers.  One of them I got
numerous answers about and decided to call and talk with him about the
surgery.  He called me back after his clinic was closed and talked to me
on his own dime for over 1/2 hour.  We decided to go with him for the
surgery (drove across the state) and ended up paying only $350 for an
exam and a right adrenalectomy.
 
Don't get me wrong, I would have paid the $900 if that was the best I
could get for my ferrets, but it wasn't.  The vet we ended up with does
between 2-6 ferret surgeries a week.  I don't advocate shopping around
for the best price, but Texas is a large state and someone already
mentioned other well known ferret vets.  Give them a call, they might not
be able to talk to you right then and there because of their appointments
but they will either call you back or give you a time to call back when
they would have time to talk.  My experience has been they tend to call
you back.
 
As far as questionable success...I personally have had great success with
our adrenal surgery.  I understand that most (if not all) are successful
initially.  You might have to go back to have the 2nd one removed later
but you cured the problem with the first removal.  It just reappeared
later.  I know that there are other people on the list with way more
experience on adrenal surgery than I have and am sure that they are going
to chime in.
 
Stephanie G.
3 fuzzies and a ferret herding puppy
[Posted in FML issue 4130]