Hey All, Should have known that the moment I post about vet schools being cheaper, someone would know of one that wasn't. Thanks Cray! LOL!! I realized the moment I wrote that there would be exceptions. I was speaking from personal experience in Houston. I regularly took animals to Texas A&M, dogs, cats, and horses. Was involved in experimental medicines, nuclear meds, and got wonderful care there. Houston vets are expensive, and A&M was around one third the cost. I went for the facilities on difficult cases I had. In Texas you *must* be refered by a private vet to even make an appointment. And my vet was always happy to do this. And I will say, I would have trusted that man to preform surgery on me, with a book of anatomy by his side. Veterinarians are wonderful folks. It is an extremely competitive field. My former vet's wife was amazed when she learned her ob/gyn was a people doc because his grades weren't good enough for veterinarian school! Gives you lots of confidence. There are only 27 vet schools in the U.S. There are usually 2 or 3 medical schools in each state. And if you have a good vet, they won't mind you going for a second opinion. If they do, then get another vet. Also, ask the vet for payment arrangements. Many vets will carry a balance, for a small interest fee. Or they will also take post dated checks, breaking up your payments that way. A good vet will try and work with you, to help the animal. But at the same time, don't take advantage of this either! They don't make the money you may think and have lots of debts from becoming a vet. And if they have their own practice, they have a huge investment in facilities. A little more on hormones. Yes, I am being picky I admit. But this is very important to understand. I was diagnosed and treated for an auto-immune disease known as Grave's Disease. It is when your thyroid goes nuts and produces too much thryroid hormone. At the worse, I could not even shut my eyes for the tremors. You can treat it 3 ways, surgical removal of thyroid, chemical destruction of thyroid (radio-active iodine) and thyroid suppression hormones. The latter is the least effective and hardest to control. And yes, hyper-thyroidism occurs in animals, I had a cat treated for the exact same thing at A&M. From everything I have read, it does seem that trying to supress hormones is harder than removing what is producing them and then using replacement therapies. I guess that is why I would lean towards surgical removal of adrenal glands, IF THERE ARE NO OTHER RISK FACTORS INVOLVED. I know how I felt with too much thyroid hormone. It isn't pleasant. And although many would scoff at the idea that hormones, of any kind, can affect behavior, I am sure most women understand the absolute truth of that statement. And that goes for all mammals, or would anyone like to say it doesn't, in a public forum? Supression therapies can take a long time to work, if they work at all. And they tend to require more and more meds, ultimately reaching a point of not working at all. But in some cases, this is really the only viable choice. Chemo and nuclear meds are expensive and hard to find. A&M was the only place you could get nuclear when I treated my cat. It was over an hour one way to get there and I couldn't visit the cat for 2 or 3 weeks, due to OSHA regs. Chemo was at least that far, and would require many trips, which isn't pratical for many people. And in my personal experience, it just flat isn't worth it, for many reasons. Do I have a degree? Nope. I am a very well educated layman when it comes to medicine, some animals and people included. And I have a feeling that the readers of this forum are like me. If they don't know, they will search out answers and opinions. Everytime I have to deal with a disease in an animal that I haven't dealt with before, I research. I have even managed, on occassion, to come up with new papers on things that the vets hadn't run across yet. If you have a good, working relationship with your vet and think you can handle it, ask to observe surgeries and proceedures. Some don't mind. I have sat in through a lot of surgeries, helped out with x-rays (I can read them pretty well too), learned to administer shots, watched fecals and even sat through some necropsies. I wished I had enough knowledge to preform some of these things myself, such as Bob Church does, but I also know my limits. But there is *nothing* limiting me educating myself, and that is the most important thing you can give your animals. As my current vet says, I am the kind of owner she wants. Why? Because I will tell her when I have an animal that may bite, I acknowledge when I don't do what I should, I pay attention to the symptoms and I ask a lot of questions. And she is the kind of vet I want, because when she doesn't know something, she tells me. Then we both research. If your vet won't tell you they don't know, I would be careful. There is nothing wrong with a lack of knowledge, but not admitting that is stupidity. Also, I would heartily recommend a good book to read for many basic yet comprehensive explantions of biology. _Human Biology_ by Daniel D. Chiras, West Publishing Co. It was my text for my human biology class this semester. Yes, it only deals with humans, but a lot of the mechanisms are applicable to all animals. And I think if you can reference something to yourself, it is easier to reference it to your pets. It is for me anyway. And this book gives a good overview of differents environmental factors that upset the homeostatis in humans, such as light, diet, chemicals, etc. What I love about this forum is the knowledge contained here. I feel it is important for all involved to give their opinions and experiences. For what is posted, there is very little misinformation here. But sometimes, I don't think it gets detailed enough either. And I can understand that, it is an effort to phrase things so that everyone can understand. But sometimes you just have to get into the fine points, to make things a little clearer. Margaret Marie [Posted in FML issue 2154]