Doug's Sounding Board

I’ve been avoiding talking about this unless it’s been directly mentioned. Partially because I just didn’t want to be thinking about it so much, and partially because when I told people about it I wanted as much information as possible. But I’m done with that now. We know all we’re going to know and it’s easier if others know.

About three weeks ago Grover and Sage turned four. On the weekend of the 19th of August I felt a lump on Grover and asked Nicole about it. She thought I was talking about another lump on him that was from normal day-to-day stuff like bruises from playing or a poke from a fox tail. A few days later she asked me about the lump since she felt it too and we realized that we were talking about different lumps a few days ago.

Nicole took Grover in the next day (Friday) and the x-ray showed a mass growing next to his kidney. Further testing was scheduled for Monday.

Monday they aspirated the area and found a lot of blood. The ultrasound results showed it to be large and growing fast. They couldn’t tell for sure but based on the bloody aspiration and the ultrasound the doctor thought it might be a hemangiosarcoma. It didn’t appear to be invading any organs, but the doctor x-rayed his lungs and they appeared clean. We agreed it needed to come out so we scheduled surgery for the next day.

Tuesday Grover had his tumor excised and sent to the lab. They cut out some of his side muscle since it was growing into the muscle but they couldn’t get it all. The tumor had a pretty good blood supply going to it. The doctor said it was a spindle cell tumor which is good because mast cell tumors I guess are just plain nasty right off the bat. We kept his drain tube going and waited for the results. By Thursday Grover wanted to be a lot more active but he listened to us when we told him to lay down.

Friday he got his tube out which made our lives easier since we didn’t have to keep watching out for him messing with the drain tube (he didn’t much anyway). We put a tube top on him when we aren’t around so he won’t mess with the stiches but he doesn’t seem too inclined to do that either. Later Friday we got the call back about the tumor, it is cancer. An unknown cancer. We didn’t think unknown was in the realm of possible answers, but apparently it’s fairly common. So we still don’t know if it’s the nasty hemangiosarcoma or not. From reading about the various cancer types on caninecancerawareness.org it seems like the only one that fits what we know. It doesn’t target specific areas, it’s not a mast cell tumor mass, and it grew very rapidly.

Today the doctor called and told us that it will definitely come back if we don’t do anything. They recommend 16 radiation sessions over 5 weeks. Each time he must be anesthetized. Apparently radiation is handled better by animals better than people. The biggest side effects should be a bald spot or maybe a fur color change. Friday Grover gets his stitches out so he can really go run and play.