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!!
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
You know that paranoid feeling you get whenever your tripawd has anything wrong with it – the sinking “oh god the cancers back/spread/worse” feeling? Well, turns out that feeling extends to other dogs!
Last night Tim & I got home after work, came in to find waggly bums of excitement. Straight away I noticed Dotti, our non-tripawd dog, was limping on her back leg. Luckily, she was already booked into the vets for her annual vaccinations/check up. We did a quick check of her leg and off we went to the clinic.
On the way there we were discussing what she must have done – fell down the stairs, twisted awkwardly, fallen off something etc, followed by jokes about her not having a tumour like Meg did.
“No, well we could see the tumour in Meg’s leg, if it was going to be cancer it would be osteosarcoma” I said, without even thinking, because you know, light hearted joking talk about cancer becomes ok post cancer? But then it hit me. What if it is osteosarcoma, or some other cancer like that. It wouldn’t be. She just has a minor injury. Its fine. So what if it sounds like all the stories you read on tripawds? There are thousands of stories about dogs limping who don’t have cancer!
So I was subtly a mess all the way to the vets, who said it was probably just strain and gave her anti-inflams, but that paranoia is still lingering in the back of my mind. The sooner Dotti starts showing improvement the better!
Day four was again up and down, with its own set of complications and accomplishments. Meggmoo, our gooseberry, was not interested in food at all. Breakfast, nope, lunch nope, dinner, hand fed after pleading!!
This made things difficult given the vet said she strictly needs food with her daily rimadyl medication or she’ll be sick. She ended up reluctantly eating one cheese slice. That counts right? She hasn’t been sick anyway!
She ran up the steps, again, much to my horror because she ran faster than she ever has as a quad dog, I was sure she’d slip!
She spent the rest of the day snoozing while I stressed over the fact 1) she wasn’t eating 2) she was /still/ managing to do too much exercise (including trying to jump up onto the couch) and 3) we were quickly approaching day 5 and she still hadn’t pooped yet! Pumpkin, sweet potato & lamb baby food to the rescue!
Day 5
Once again, Meg showed no interest in food. It isn’t uncommon for Meg to not want breakfast, but damn it is irritating when she is recovering! She had a few bites of chicken for breakfast, and another cheese slice with her rimadyl. Once again she seemed pretty worn out and sore – she has been shaking most of the day. It is hard to tell what is her natural chihuahua shake and what is pain.
At around midday, Meg shot up from sleep and raced to the door. This was promising given she hadn’t wee’d since the night before! She did a long wee and then stayed in the garden. I held my breath and she squatted her bum down, trying to balance. And there it was. A long waited for, very orange and smelly poop. Finally! 5 days in the making.
This afternoon we all made the trip to the vets for a check up! Vet says we can lower Meg’s tramadol to see if that improves her appetite, but I pointed out her pain issues and she was just as confused as me with what to do. Back to trial and error! The fentanyl patch and wound bandage came off, all was looking well. Then came the big news – the biopsy results from the lymph node in the cancer leg. The vet started saying there is good news and bad news (oh god!) but it seems mostly good, there were mast cells in the lymph BUT they weren’t cancerous (yet?). The vet wasn’t surprised given the tumour was pretty large and close to the lymph. So reluctantly for now, she is seemingly in the clear, but not out of the woods. Chances are we got all the cancer, but a cell or two could’ve been missed and could’ve spread. For now we sit and we wait for any signs of spread to the organs, or any new lumps for that matter, and then we looking into chemo options.
Honestly, I’ve expected the entire time that her cancer journey wasn’t over, and I’m expecting in the future we’ll face a choice of what to do. For now though, I am just happy that she *might* be cancer free, and can get on with living her happy little Meg life.
She is doing a great job of that this afternoon, running around the house like a lunatic (I think she is happy to be bandage free), we’re struggling to keep her still!
Crazy eyes! Hyperactivity episode underway. How did I end up behind a pillow?!
Settle down Meggymoo, still another 9 days until those stitches come out!
Meg, our 8 year old jackchi has had a lump in her back leg for around three months.
We took her to the vet when we discovered the lump, they did a needle aspiration and although the cells didn’t look normal, they didn’t look like “anything nasty”. This was a massive relief to my partner and myself. Meg went on some anti inflammatories and some antibiotics, as the vet seemed to think it was some sort of infection or injury. The lump went away, and we stopped worrying. Even though the lump came back, it was always after strenuous exercise or stress, so I (stupidly) put off taking her back to the vet. We got on with everything, Meg continued living a happy life, now with her new sister Dotti.
About two weeks ago Meg had a bad few days, she didn’t want to eat, she didn’t want to get out of bed. She trailed behind on walks and stood by our feet at the dog park. She would hop around, keeping her left rear leg, the one with the lump, off the ground. This isn’t uncommon given she has a knee problem and the cold had made it worse all winter. I thought her heart condition had gotten worse, or old age had slapped her in the face hard, and her knee had gotten worse. In the end I think it was simply she went a kilometre too far on a walk and was very worn out. ANYWAY, the vet suggested we biopsied the lump, just to be sure, but he was “fairly certain” it wasn’t cancer, because it shrunk and grew with exercise.
Meg, high as a kite post biopsy
Five days or so later Meg went in for her biopsy, and I thought that would be the most terrifying experience of the leg lump mystery. The vet was confident it wasn’t cancer, therefore I was confident. We were both wrong. On Friday the 26th I got a call from the vets, which started with “unfortenately the news isn’t what we hoped for…”. My heart sank as the vet went on to say Meg had a Mast Cell Tumour, and our four options were radical surgery to get clean margins, less radical surgery with radiation, amputation, or letting the cancer eventually kill her and doing what we could for pain etc. My heart was broken into a million pieces, as I tried to figure out what to do, and how we could afford any of the treatment options. Ironically, moments before taking the phone call I saw a tripawd walking past, missing its left rear leg. Seeing how well the lil guy hopped along was probably the only thing that helped me that night.
After speaking with the vet in person, and finding out Meg’s tumour was low grade, we were fairly certain amputation was our best option. Although its unlikely to have spread, we aren’t getting ahead of ourselves this time, but we will deal with any news of it spreading when it comes.
We went home and I found this site. It has been amazing and reassuring. I’ve gone from being wrecked about the decision to semi-ok about it. I’m still terrified about recovery, the surgery, but I know we’re doing the right thing for Meg. Her surgery is booked in for the 21st of September, so for now we are letting Meg enjoy her last few weeks of having four legs.
Meanwhile I am trying to read and learn as much as possible about tripawds, and making a list of things we need, new harness, new bed, rugs and yoga mats, a fence to keep the dogs apart while Meg recovers.
Any tips or advice would be appreciated, I know none of us want to be in this situation, but it is very comforting to know that so many people have faced this before me and now have very happy puppers continuing their journeys.
