Monday, I took Mercy’s sutures out of her incision from the mass removal 2 weeks ago. That felt like an effort in futility – removing sutures from a leg that’s coming off in, now, less than a week. For whatever reason, it just felt like the routine thing to do, so I did it anyway. This incision is healing well. Much better than the last one. Also, got back the results of her radiology consult for her chest xrays, no pulmonary mets! Hooray for little steps! Tuesday, her new shirts came in the mail. One is a pink one with, what seems to have become out motto for the moment, “Cancer took my leg, not my life”. The other, a gray one with “Cancer Survivor”. Tuesday also brought a cold front down from Alaska and the beginning of some incredibly cold weather for a little spoiled shorthair dog, so we broke out the winter clothing a little early this year. Walking around the block in her snazzy hot pink coat and her halloween bandanna definitely gets some looks. Today, we had another visit to the vets office, so what better way to show up so close to halloween than in a witch costume! Mercy looks so cute in her hat and dress. She had to take it off quickly, though, to begin her examination and sedation prior to her ultrasound. For the ultrasound, we had to shave halfway up her sides, all of her abdomen, and a spot on her left shoulder. In addition to her left front leg from the mass removals, and the shaved spot on her right front leg from the IV catheters, she’s looking a little risque! At 1pm, the doctor came with the ultrasound equipment, he came down from Tucson, 1.5 hours away to see her. The results of the ultrasound were… not bad, but not good. There is nothing that seemed to alarm either of the doctors, or prevent us from continuing with the amputation next week, but there were a few “oddities”. She had a small lesion on her spleen, which they believe may be normal geriatric changes. She also had a very odd round cystic “thing” not attached to any of her organs, just *there* near her kidney. Neither of the vets knew what it was. Everything else looked okay, which is good. We’ll be repeating her ultrasound in 3 months to check to see what’s going on with what we did find. The visiting vet wasn’t able to palpate or locate her prescapular lymph node with ultrasound, so we weren’t able to send a sample in to check for metastasis. Chances are, since noone is able to find it, there’s nothing to worry about; however, we’re going to see if we can find it during the surgery and remove it to err on the side of caution. After the ultrasound, we wiped as much of the ultrasound “goo” off of her as possible (I can’t stand that stuff!) and I took her home. We’ll be wearing shirts regularly for awhile now! Between the cold front, not having any fur, and soon losing a leg, it’s regular shirts for awhile. So now we’re curled up on the couch with a faux mink blanket, some mac’n’cheese and some B horror movies courtesy of the upcoming holiday. Mercy is still recovering from the sedation. Oh, how she hates sedation, but at least she’s sleeping now. Also, just received her new ruff-wear harness in the mail. We’ll be sizing that correctly tomorrow when she’s not so wobbly. We’ll also be getting a bath tomorrow to get all the residual “goo” off, and to make sure she’s ready for her surgery next Wednesday. Saturday will hopefully be a halloween costume contest for the dogs, then rest for a few days… at least for Mercy. Wednesday will come to soon for me, and yet not soon enough. As much as I’m not looking forward to the amputation, it’s going to come, and I’ll be glad when it’s over and we can recover together.
Wednesday, here we come…