think happy thoughts

abby our beagle has cancer. please keep her in your thoughts. she's always had these harmless fatty tumors. we asked our vet about them a while back and he said not to worry. well, there's another type of tumor that resembles the harmless lipomas - a mast cell tumor. over the past few weeks, this one particular tumor went from marble-sized to golf ball-sized. it didn't seem to bother abby at all until late last night when she would wince in pain when it was touched. i called and made a vet appointment for as early as possible. the vet drew some blood out of the nasty tumor and concluded that it is one of these mast cell tumors and not the harmless lipoma. she will require surgery to have it removed, but we have to wait until some of the inflammation goes down. she's on a whole drug cocktail designed to do just that. and unfortunately, we don't really get a sense for the prognosis until they do the surgery and take a biopsy. if it a grade 1 tumor she'll probably be ok, but if it's a 2 or a 3 the outlook might not be as good. in the article about MCTs linked above she's got a couple of indicators for a poor prognosis - large tumor and rapid recent growth. these tumors sure sound mean - releasing yucky chemicals into her body. she's lost a few pounds and limps around because it hurts so much (the tumor is on her belly, near one of her hind legs.) she is still waggling her tail and eager to eat so at least it seems like her spirit is still up. we'll bring her back to the vet on friday (no black friday shopping for me!) to check on the inflammation and see if she is ready for the surgery. we love our abby and will do anything for her but this comes at a pretty uncomfortable financial point in our lives. today's visit was more than $250 and the surgery will be about $500. that's murphy's law for you... kicking us while we're down. stay tuned for more abby updates!