Category: Cancer

Two year ampuversary!

We got there! Two years ago and one day, we nervously waited for news while Meg had her amputation. During those stressful hours and days in her recovery I never could have imagined she would still be with us two years later!

The vets said to us that if Meg made it two years she would be out of the woods, out of remission and that there is no chance the cancer spread and very unlikely the cancer would come back. I remember replying that I’d just be stoked if she was still alive in two years, I honestly didn’t think she’d make it this far after having cancer and losing a leg.

But she is still here, happy as ever, taking on the world! She may have had cancer scares and tried to get herself into trouble quite a few times, and if she was a cat I’m sure she would be close to using up her 9 lives but for now I’m over the moon that I still get to enjoy and love my lil girl.

Keep going Meggymoo, you’re such a little trooper!

Surgery done

After putting off booking in for Meg’s lump removal and dental, and then pushing it back so we could get a dental month discount, yesterday Meg finally went under the knife.

I forgot how stressful Meg staying at the vet is, and by 12:30 I was relived to see my vets number pop up on my phone and even more relieved to hear everything went well. The surgery went well and Meg only needed one of her front teeth out.

This clinic must have used different pre anaesthetic sedatives or something because Meg was very spaced out last night. Luckily she was still with it enough to have her dinner and even a chicken nugget from McDonalds, but there was lot of wobbly walks, a bit of whimpering and shaking, and a lot of glazed over looks.

The wound is looking better today, but poor lil Meg is still tired and not impressed with annoying stitches. We have her in a shirt to stop her scratching, funnily enough she wouldn’t keep the little dog sock on her back leg.

Fingers crossed her recovery goes smoothly and we get good news back about the lump – the entire process is reminding me of the amputation recovery, but I’m even more worried she’s going to rip the wound right open.

Hopefully that was the last time Meg needs to go into surgery for a while!!

Inconclusive results

I worked from home on Wednesday waiting for Meg’s aspiration results to come back. At 4:30pm I decided that the results must have got delayed and turned my phone back onto silent, only to miss a call from the vets at 4:34pm. Called back and was told the vet would call me back when she had the chance.

Still feeling nervous, I headed off to a function an hour later, telling my partner (Tim) to get in touch with the vet clinic and have them call him instead. Another hour or so later I check my phone to see a message from Tim saying “let me know when you can chat” (about Meg’s results). That was a heart sinking moment. You don’t have to chat about benign tumours… after a few messages with Tim and reading the pathology report we got emailed the results were in. Inconclusive whether the tumour is malignant or benign, it mostly looks benign but there is a few rare, small, areas of cells that could be malignant.

The path report said to take a biopsy, and I guess the vet figures when a tumour is only 1cm or so big, just take the entire thing out. So surgery is needed again for poor Meggypeggyposis. I’m a little relieved that the results seem kind of positive, or at least not entirely negative. I mean, if it is a malignant cancer, at least we won’t find out until the tumour is already gone, and by the time we find out Meg will be cancer free again hopefully.

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Comfort frens

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Fingers crossed for our budget, and more importantly fingers crossed for Meg!

 

“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