To Arthur concerning Guy's surgery - Art, it sounds like he got a pretty good going over. I would have liked the vet to take a better look at the adrenals, but the pancreas was the most important point to look at, as I recall. Older ferrets may have many lumps on their pancreas, and most of them are usually not islet cell tumors. The part of the pancreas that produces degestive enzymes (the exocrine part), will also tend to get knotty as a ferret ages. Often it can be difficult to decide which are the islet cell tumors and which aren't. My guidelines are that if it is discolored from the surrounding tissue in any way, or is very well demarcated (most of the ICT's to my eye, look like small BB's), then it comes out. Ferrets can do well without spleens. We don't know what makes 90% of them get big - but a ferret with a very large spleen can rupture it, and do himself a lot of damage. I generally recommend if the spllen is that large, that it come out. I would be interested in seeing what Guy's blood glucose levels look like in a week or so. Unfortunately, he will have to be off of the prednisone for a couple of weeks. Keep us posted... To Carl Baewer concerning articles: That's terrific what you are doing for non-Internet BBS'sers. I was one of those unitl fairly recently. In addition to my other many labors, I run a sub that is present on about 70 boards across the country called "The Pet Doctor's In". Most of the boards are WWIV, but I think there are many others mixed in. Concerning my articles, at the moment you have the lot of them. AS I get time, or inspiration (the latter is in much greater supply than the former) I will turn out some more. Thanks for the email. Bruce Williams, DVM [log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 0687]