“Have you noticed this lump on her mammary gland?” Here we go again?

So yesterday Meg went in for another heart check up and to have x-rays on her heart and chest to see if she needs to start medications for her heart murmur, at a different vet than the pushy one who made us feel super uneasy about Meg’s future.

While she was only in for x-rays and wouldn’t even be going under anaesthesia or anything I was still nervous waiting for the call that she was fine after the “”procedure”” (as the vet clinic called it).

After an unproductive morning of worrying I finally got the call from the vet.

The heart is enlarged (it has always been enlarged since we adopted Meg in 2015 so no shock) and she should start on medications to prevent heart disease. As we expected. Phew I thought, and expected the call to end around that point after confirming when we would be in to pick up Meg. But the call kept going

The blood check showed liver enzymes are a little high, well, one specific one that can go up and down and it needs to be checked in three months. My heart skipped a little, what does that mean? Is she sick? Is her liver not working properly? Is it cancer?

And then it got worse. “Have you noticed this lump on her mammary gland?” the vet said. We had indeed noticed the lump, it had been there ever since we had Meg and slowly got bigger, but any other vet we had seen had said its probably nothing or not mentioned it at all, one had even said they thought it was loose bone cartilage. This vet though, perhaps a better vet, had aspirated it and wanted to know if we were happy for it to be sent off to the lab. So my heart sunk and the rest of the phone call was a bit blurry, as I quickly began to google “high liver enzymes dog” and “mammary tumour dog”.

When we picked up Meg the vet explained that mammary tumours are very common in dogs that weren’t desexed as puppies (thanks, Meg’s old owners), and there is a 50% chance it is benign and 50% chance it isn’t. If we lose that coin toss, it is another 50% chance it is a type that generally doesn’t spread, and 50% chance it is a type that spreads. From my googling, I think things are in our favour, the lump is small and the fact she has had it for years, it is slow growing, and not shown symptoms probably indicates it isn’t an aggressive, cruel cancer? I’ll be glad to know though, and once again feel silly for trusting vets words to not worry about something. I was feeling pretty relaxed about it, even if it is cancer, hopefully it will just be a simple surgery to remove a lump, but this morning I saw a missed call from the vet clinic and nearly threw up expecting it to be the pathology results, so perhaps I’m not as calm as I thought. It was simply the receptionist wanting to know if Meg was okay after being at the vets all day yesterday, which is a nice touch, but one that has sent nerves through me all over again. The other possibility is it is a mast cell tumour, but again, given how long it has been there for fingers crossed that means it is just sitting there, not spreading?

As for the heart news, I’m feeling glad that I stuck with my gut about the other vet we saw who wanted to start her on diuretics and other medications for actual heart disease, without checking if Meg actually  had heart disease yet. The vet we saw yesterday was adamant they wouldn’t of really helped the situation, and given the side effects of diuretics I’m glad Meg won’t need them for a while hopefully. So I suppose the lesson here is trust your instincts and second guess your vet about everything.

Fingers crossed for good news about the lump – the results should be back tomorrow *gulp*.

Love to all your tripawds!

PS I finally added some photos from our holiday on my blog about it – beach meg