biff update.
Last edited Sat Sep 24, 2016, 02:03 PM - Edit history (1)
from my fb-
sooooo. my best buddy, biff, has a thing.
he has had a little knobby growth on his back leg for a while. for some reason it didnt bother me after if failed to blow up when it first arrived.
anyway, finally got it looked at and it is a mast cell tumor.
he had it removed yesterday, and the vet described it as- one ugly tumor. (eta- he got through the surgery like a champ, and is a good boy about bugging the incision w/o the donut of shame.)
pounding my head on the wall, but it is what it is.
so, this is a low level malignancy that often never recurs after removal. it produces histamines, and can be retarded by daily bendryl.
awaiting biopsy results next week.
optimistic.
eta biopsy report-
well, it is a strange tumor in that it was subcutaneous, while it is usually in the skin. no idea what this means for his prognosis.
but- the mitotic index, the measure of how fast it was growing, was low. that's a good thing.
also showed that they got a good margin. the vet was worried about that, because it had adhered to a lot of tissues. that means that they likely got all or most of the tumor, and that it had likely not metastasized.
we are getting away w not making him wear a cone of shame. tho he has licked at the incision a bit, he isnt really worrying it. it is in a hard spot to reach, plus he has a couple small wounds where the iv's were, and those are a lot easier to reach. so he has been a lot more focused on those.
a bit on the sleepy side as we are keeping him on bendryl for now. i will try switching his over to claratin soon. just need to get the dose right for his metabolism. we are fighting skin troubles that were not responding to either drug, but when we gave 2 pills instead of one the bendryl started clearing up the hot spots.
hopefully we can switch him to something that doesnt make him sleepy all day.
we went to work at the hospice unit yesterday where he was his usual, magical self.
fingers crossed.
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