Didn't See That Coming

We had an interesting end to this past week. First off, the foundation work is done for now.  We have one more area that needs some steel under it, but that will wait until we get the encapsulation done in our crawlspace sometime next year hopefully.  Quite a bit of my flower bed was destroyed but I knew that was going to happen.  This year was a transition year in that bed anyway, as I am converting it to a pollinator garden.  Hopefully some of the perennials I planted in that now-blank area will come back next year.  

On Friday, we went to a vet appointment for Milo.  He has been showing some cognitive changes for a while now but lately there has been more pacing and panting, so I wanted to make sure he wasn't in pain for another reason.  Our vet started checking Milo out and immediately said he needed an ultrasound.  It turns out he had a tumor in his spleen the size of a softball!  It was pushing against his intestines and I can only imagine how much pain it was causing.  Splenic tumors are very vascular and his was a ticking time bomb, so he was in surgery about an hour later. We got to see him for a minute before surgery, and tell him we loved him and what a good boy he was.  He's an anxious dog anyway, and now at nearly 15 his hearing is gone and his eyes aren't great.   

The day after surgery 

The biggest worry was that they would open him up and find a cancer that had spread.  In that situation, we would have made the decision to let him go.  You can imagine how it felt sitting by the phone and waiting for a call.  Thankfully they didn't find any other tumors, he did well, and only needed to stay one night.  

He does have an enlarged gallbladder and removal in a dog is a risky surgery with high mortality, so we are doing all we can to avoid that possibility.  Milo is now on a low-fat prescription food and 2 meds for life.  He's also got 4 other new meds right now (2 antibiotics and 2 for pain) so we are still getting used to all of that.  The splenic tumor has been sent off for pathology so we can see exactly what it is.  If it's benign then we don't have to worry that it could be what is going on with his gallbladder as well.  He goes back in a little under 2 weeks to have his sutures (there must be 20) removed and we should find out the pathology then.  

3 days after surgery

My husband had to work Labor Day weekend but was off Labor Day, and I spent the weekend at home making sure Milo was OK.  Hopefully this week will be a quiet and boring one!