Just before Christmas Gwen had her yearly checkup. Her kidney disease has not progressed so we’re doing great with the food and the fluids every three weeks. The bad news was a lump discovered on her back leg next to her “knee”. We watched it closely and could tell that it was bigger within a few weeks so a needle aspiration was performed and the sample sent off to the lab. Doc at the lab felt it was likely cancer and vet felt Gwen should see a specialist because of the location- there isn’t much skin there so you only get one shot at removal.

On Monday I took Gwen to the Foster Small Animal Hospital at Tufts for a consult. She was admitted and put on iv fluids for the night to reduce her potassium levels (due to the kidney disease) and went into surgery on Tuesday. Because of the location they couldn’t take as wide a margin around the tumor as they would have liked. It was also embedded in the muscle so a good portion of that had to be removed as well. We were asked to pick her up Wednesday after 6 PM and when we brought her home she was still quite loopy. It was the quietest car trip with Gwen ever. She has pain medicine for a few more days and a checkup with our vet when she goes in for fluids on Wednesday with suture removal a few days later. It’ll be sometime next week before the lab confirms or rules out cancer. Hopefully she’ll be with us some years yet!