Rani-dog update

After the surgery to remove that nasty oral tumor (here is my blog post about this), Rani has been like a new dog.  She has been back to her old self. Guess it is obvious how uncomfortable the poor girl really was.

Despite the fact that Rani has her spunk back, I have still been pretty concerned about what the results from the biopsy will say. It's important for me to know if my old girl is dealing with cancerous tumor or just an annoying growth. The Easter holiday delayed results a bit, but I finally got to speak with the vet.

I have been fully expecting the results to be benign. As soon as we picked her up from her surgery, I have been incredibly optimistic.  She has been doing really well with no signs of any issues or discomfort. When I told the vet how well she has been doing, his response was, "that is good because the results are not good. She has a very bad cancer." Yeah, no sugar-coating with the language barrier.

My heart stopped for a second and I felt my palms get sweaty, then he explained to me why things were probably going to be ok - at least for awhile. The cancer that she has is nasty, but it's localized and it tends not to spread to other parts of her body. The bad news is that it is probably deeply rooted and therefore difficult to fully remove without an invasive procedure. One that he would not recommend nor perform on his dog, and one that seems highly unnecessary to me if she is doing so well. On the brighter side, this type of cancer tends to be slow growing, and Rani responded so well to the removal of the tumor this last time that we should be able to do it again with hopefully similar results.

What does this all mean? It means my girl is likely to be around for quite awhile (she is still promising me at least five more years), and hopefully any of the negative effects from the cancer will be put at bay for a long time.

Happy day :)


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