Last Updated on: 23rd December 2019, 08:30 am
I feel like a bit of a jerk for not giving everyone an update sooner. I got the update two weeks ago about Tansy’s lumps, but haven’t really had a chance to write it all down. So here it goes.
It’s all good news! All the lumps came back as benign. The one on her leg that they thought was a mast cell tumour was called a keratoacanthoma. I’d link to an article, but everything I google is written for vets with big ol’ degrees. Plus the one I’d link to is broken. this link isn’t so bad. Her tumour is under the Cornifying Epitheliomas section. The point is it’s some kind of wacky tumour coming from a hair follicle and it’s harmless. The other two turned out to be lipomas, those fatty lumps. So, there shouldn’t be any next steps and we go on as usual.
Tansy is healing up well, but I can still feel stitches in a couple of places, especially on her back. But the spots are getting smaller. As of the 10th, she has been cone-free and she’s been allowed to go back to work.
So far the harness hasn’t been rubbing on anything it shouldn’t. The school sent these fleece things to help minimize the harness’s rubbing but things seem to be ok. I felt bad for Shmans at the beginning though. The first day after she was cleared to work, we took the train, but I was afraid to put her coat on because I thought it would rub. But I didn’t quite realize how cold it was…and didn’t take into account that she has bare patches of skin. So off we went and everything seemed fine…but when we got to the end of the mall driveway, she would not continue. We were going to the mall and that was it! Never mind that it wasn’t truly open yet, and I don’t know my way from the mall parking lot to the train, so we had to wait for someone, so we had to be out in the cold longer. In her mind, the mall was warm, she was cold, she was going where it was warm. Frustrating as it was, I couldn’t help but laugh because I knew what she was thinking and it was my own fault I was in this pickle.
I can’t decide if she enjoyed the little holiday when she was housebound or not. Whenever I would leave, she would circle around my legs as if to say “I’m here, I’m here!” and she would step back when she saw the cane…seemingly sadly. But whenever either of us would try to take her for a sniffy walk, she would insist on coming back in, and after we got in, she would just go off to bed and sleep. She wasn’t bugging us for stuff too much. But boy, was she ever happy to see everybody when I took her back to work.
When the news came back that the lumps were benign, some people wondered if my vet clinic took me for a ride. There thought was why, instead of knocking her out and yoinking all of them, didn’t they take a biopsy of a little more of the lump rather than take it off. For one, the lump they were really uneasy about was super small, so I don’t know how easy it would have been to biopsy. Plus, the other two they took were hard to get a hold of while she was awake because her skin would twitch. So, if she’s already out for one lump, they might as well take the other two and then they can be sure. This seems to be the general consensus, so I don’t think I was taken for a ride. Plus, Tansy has 5 other lipomas and they’ve never tried to take them. I think these were weird.
I have to backtrack a bit. For a few months, I’ve been wondering if Tansy is winding down, heading for retirement. If she is, she’s winding down slower than Trix, but I’m still seeing things that make me go hmmm. I’ve been keeping a log to try and keep me honest.
For a few days after she was allowed to work again, I thought maybe she had new energy, and even though those lumps were benign, they were somehow making her feel more under the weather. But after a particularly busy couple of days, Tansy actually refused to work for the first time. So…I guess my first suspicions were more correct than I thought. But for now, she still enjoys seeing everybody at work and enjoys some challenge. I just think she actually has limits now, which is a new development.
So that’s the end of the Shmans lump saga…for now. Thanks for asking about her and sending good thoughts.
I was a little surprised that she never insisted on a walk. Generally she likes taking those with me when the opportunity comes up. But good on her for deciding that it was either too cold (it was) or that I’m tired (she was definitely that too) and knowing her limits. It was very un-dog-like. She was content to just hang out on the floor for some pets whenever we would come back in and then head back to bed again. I hardly saw her, honestly. Now and then we would go check on each other, but mostly she was good to chill.
And she wasn’t even much of an arse about the cone. Now and then she’d try to give us a halfhearted slip, but mostly she knew when it was time to put it back on. She wouldn’t even take any real advantage of the breaks we gave her to lick the hell out of everything. She was super calm and yes, un-dog-like.
I’m glad she seems to be starting to get back to whatever her old self is.