MCT – Meg the Tripawd

“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

A particularly late Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Essentially everyday during the christmas break I thought ‘I should update my tripawds blog and check out what is happening on the forum’ but somehow, time got away from me! Never the less, I hope everyone, especially the tripawds, had a fantastic holiday season filled with love and joy! I hope those we sent christmas cards to received them or will receive them in the next week! We received our tripawds calendar for christmas which I adore, I love seeing thriving tripawds from the past and present!

Meg has been great living her three legged life, and was super spoilt on christmas day, her and Dotti even got their own cooked lunch!! Meanwhile, we’ve been busy finding a new rental property to move into, ideally we wanted a space with a yard (currently in an apartment complex) but we settled on a lovely townhouse, next to seemingly one of the biggest parklands in Melbourne! So many spots for the girls to explore! The only issue – the town house has indoor stairs. Our apartment complex had stairs up to our second level place, so it won’t be a new thing for Meg, but I’ll be interested to see how she goes as she ages. Do other older tripawds just stay on one level?

My other gripe with the dogs at the moment – they aren’t eating their kibble (specific senior dog Hills Science Diet stuff) much! They eat their wet food in the morning and always eat treats, but kibble, they’ll have max half of their daily amount each, generally less. This hasn’t impacted Dotti much but Meg has lost a fair bit of weight. I know its a good thing for tripawds to be on the skinny side but I’d hate to see her get too skinny. I do have the awful thought in the back of my mind that the mast cell cancer spread, but given both dogs aren’t eating much kibble while eating everything else, I think they’re just being fussy or not awfully hungry? Probably waiting for me to cave and give them treats (as I often do if they get left at home alone). Anyone got tips to encourage eating kibble?

In better news, we got our photoshoot prints back, that we won thanks to Meg’s cancer battle! The results are gorgeous. We wanted to highlight they’re stray history and show just how loved they are now. They both are wearing their snoods as Meg had a bald next (damn that eye ulcer). A sample:

Hope all is well, love and the best new year wishes to all!

Post op day 4 & 5 – off come the bandages

Day 4

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!

Post Op Day 3 – Here comes the crash?

Day three post op has been up and down, but for the most part calm and stress free.

Meg slept through the night and woke up around 7:30 wanting to come up on the bed for a snuggle. Drugged her up with some tramadol and let her nest under the doona cover like she used to as a quad dog.

Things seemed fine, until I offered her breakfast. Not interested at all. I was 95% sure this was because I blended up some of her normal dog food with raw chicken, she has been eating raw chicken by itself for the last few days, but there was a risk that A) she was in too much pain and B) the day 3-5 crash beginning. I’m prepared for that crash but at the same time, I want to keep enjoying a happy Meg for a little longer. I insisted we get her a cheeseburger meat patty for lunch, when she has her rimadyl and needs to eat.

Fortunately it seemed like she was just sulking about dog food and went on enjoying the day. The sun was out and she took up some sun baking.

We even took her to the (very empty) dog park where she sat on my lap, laid in the grass and even had a little roll in the grass – nothing too strenuous. The happiness on her face was amazing, I think the park on a sunny day is her favourite thing.

The morning was topped off with her eating her cheeseburger lunch and happily getting drugged.

The main highlight from the afternoon was taking her out for a pee break, going to pick her up to take her back to our second level apartment, but nope, she wanted to climb those steps herself! Two sets of at least 10 stairs! The first few were almost slips (I was ready to grab her), but after that she had it nailed! Safe to say she is only doing that once a day for now.

She did a fair bit of running between rooms this afternoon as well, to my horror. I enforced bed rest – she is going to be exhausted tomorrow (she already is).

Her shaking has picked up, and the signs of phantom limb pain episodes, and a hell of a lot more sulkiness and sadness has begun. Here comes the crash.

Rest well, Meggymoo!

Surgery done! Recovery days 1 & 2

Hasn’t this been a journey already! Lucky for Meg, it has been a smooth one. Love and gratitude to everyone on tripawds who has been posting on my forum threads, and talking to me in the live chat when I was waiting for news! This blog probably won’t have any new info for you guys though. Seriously though, this site is a blessing.

Surgery day!

Surgery day was stressful and long, as you’d expect. We dropped off Meg at 8:00, and honestly I wasn’t expecting to see her again, I was that sure things would go wrong. I even made my partner Tim be the contact person because I was terrified of the bad news call. I told Tim to only call if there was bad news, and around 1:00, Tim called. My heart sank and I took a deep breath and answered. Tim sounded upset and serious, and that was almost confirmation for me. Nope. Surgery went smoothly and Meg was recovering well. Men – they don’t listen to you and make you stress for no reason! Relevant info – the vets also said they’d only call if there were complications that afternoon, sounds familiar.

Our only other stress for the afternoon was where Meg would be spending the night. The receptionists /vet nurses kept asking what time we’d be picking her up, but the doctors were adamant she’d be staying overnight. I wasn’t keen on her staying alone at the vets overnight, but also the idea of bringing her home didn’t thrill me.

Around 4:00 or 5:00 the vets called. Heart sank, again. I listened intently as Tim spoke to them, but it didn’t seem like any bad news. Opposite actually – Meg was awake, tail wagging, learning to walk and even ate some chicken. She was still on an IV to manage her pain and didn’t cope with them lowering the dosage, so it looked clear she’d need to stay overnight.

We went to see her around 7:15, she looked high as a kite, very sore but happy to see us. We spent about an hour with her as the vets shut up and eventually decided to take her to the 24hr vets for the night. Our vet said he’d send through her history to them. Email never showed up to the 24hr vets AND they said our vets were meant to send over her drugs, therefore we’d have to pay for them. Lucky this turned out to be false. Although it was a stressful 30 minutes at the 24hr vets waiting to check Meg in and get her back on the IV, while wondering why her history never arrived and how we got so misled about the costs of her stay there. Alls well that ends well.

Post Op Day 1

We collected Meg from the 24hr vets in the morning, and were thrilled to hear she had a good night, and was hopping around in the morning, and even did a lil pee! Dropped her off at the regular vets, our vet was concerned that she seemed a little dehydrated and very high from all the drugs, so she’d need to spend the day there. Understandable and predictable. We would get an update in the afternoon and see if she could come home that night. Around 2:30 we called and the vet said she was good to go that evening.

We picked her up at 6:15, she seemed very happy and a lot less miserable than the previous times we saw her. She was thrilled to be home, not so thrilled with her cone of shame. She’d bump it into things and fall over. She ate dinner right away, took her drugs and settled down for the evening without too much fuss. We took her to bed around 11:00, and she settled down with only a few whimpers. At 1:30am she woke up crying and banging her cone into the bedroom door. Megquad would’ve held in a pee, or at least gone on a peepad. Not Megpod. Outside we went and she did what she needed to do, while still struggling with the cone. She took about 30 minutes to go back to sleep afterwards, lots of crying and shaking, poor lil girl. She woke up about 3 or 4 more times during the night, gently crying and shaking, luckily she’d fall back to sleep quickly, which resolved the pain issue.

Post Op Day 2

Today seems like a very laid back day! Meg has been asleep all day, aside from eating breakfast. Her pain seems under control and all is well. Hopefully the hospital drugs don’t wear off for another few days. The cone is off, given we are watching her like a hawk and it only seems to be upsetting her, that seems to have helped her a lot. Meanwhile, I am well and truly exhausted already – what do you mean I have uni work to catch up on?! Sleep please!

*Will update with any other day 2 developments as the day goes on!*

Afternoon updates:

The afternoon features a few phantom limb pain attacks, which was pretty startling for us! Poor girl must be in so much pain when it happens, nothing really prepares you for those yelps.

We also made a quick visit to the vets, the bandage over the wound was falling off and got replaced, the vet seemed very pleased at how Meg is progressing, and a little offended she is eating perfectly at home, but didn’t want food at the vets!

We also cut her tramadol from every 8-12 hours, to 6-10 hours, hopefully that keeps her ahead of the pain!

Keep kicking goals Meggymoo, we’re so proud of you!