Once again. A post about my Dog

My dog, as many of you know from blogs like this and this, is the bane of my existence. She is the 'Marley' in my life and the first spoiled, stubborn child Hubby and I have.



In September 2007, she had a cancerous mass removed. Discovered while petting her one evening, Hubby and I thought nothing of it, convinced it was merely a cyst or an infected hair follicle - until I took her in for her yearly shots a few weeks later. Since I was at the vet's office anyway, I asked the Doc about her small, cystic-pimple-sized lump. She said it might be nothing, but we would have to biopsy it to be sure. The second the needle entered the lump, it began to spread. Soon, the small bump was the size of a silver dollar - and still getting larger.

We had a couple of options: removal, chemotherapy or radiation. I chose surgery.

Luckily, the Doc had an opening in the afternoon, so I left my girl with her to get the lump removed. She came home that night with 12 stitches.



She didn't know what was going on, still trying to jump on the bed, and then whining miserably when she got up there because it would hurt her so bad. We had planned on going out of town (the wholereason for the vet visit was to renew her shots so she could be boarded) but I cancelled my trip and stayed home with her, just laying on the couch making sure she was ok.

Monday the call came that the mass was benign. She was going to be ok.

But, once dogs have this problem once, it recurs frequently and with greater intensity. She needed to be watched constantly in order to catch further lumps, and there was no guarantee that further lumps would also be benign.

As any good parent would do, we hovered for a few weeks - maybe even a few months. Constantly brushed and petted her, checking for new lumps. As time wore on, we didn't check her skin everyday. When taking her to the groomer, I couldn't even tell which side her stitches had been on. There was no visible scar under her mounds of hair, and it was not sensitive to the touch.

Then I came home from work today and Hubby wanted me to feel something on her. A lump. Two lumps, actually. One behind her shoulder and the other on her side, above her back leg. Big lumps - much bigger than the one before. Put your thumb and index finger together to form an "O". They are each that big.

They could just be fatty deposits. Dogs get these fatty deposits all over their body; they don't hurt, they don't do organ damage. They are just there. But there is no way of knowing if it is a tumor or just a fatty deposit without a biopsy.

Biopsies are very expensive. We were warned about the possiblity of more tumors and masses, and we had braced ourselves for this outcome soon after her surgery. But after a year and a half of clean health, the thought of another tumor hadn't even entered the mind. Now we have to think about our options.