Thank you
Thanks so much for well wishes, kind thoughts and prayers!
Belle is home and is doing okay. I have calmed down some. I hate that I get so stressed out.
The good news is that the tumor wasn't cancer. So that's a relief.
Here's a brief history of her problem:
Quite a few years ago, Belle had a growth on her gum. The growth was hard pink gum tissue, and not cancer. The vet cut it out, and said it would probably grow back slowly. It did grow back, and about two years later it had to be cut out again. Over the years, it has been cut out 3 times.
Last week, I noticed her mouth looked swollen on the side where the tumor is. So my hubby & I were saying we needed to take her in for surgery again, but we always try to put it off as long as possible. As long as she could eat and seemed to feel okay.
But then things took a turn for the worse over the weekend. She began to have trouble eating, seemed feverish, was sneezing a lot, and over-all didn't feel good. I looked inside her mouth and was shocked to see a huge dark gray tumor, about the size of a ping-pong ball. It looked like it was full of blood. Because it was the weekend, it took me about 2 hours to get in touch with the vet. During that time, the gray tumor busted open and bled for a long time, about 30 minutes or longer. When I talked to the vet, he said the bleeding would stop, and to bring her in today for surgery.
Now this is the gross part of the story, and I guess the bad news. The dark gray tumor was not a tumor. It was massive infection coming out of Belle's sinuses.
The real tumor, the hard pink gum tissue tumor, had grown throughout her sinuses. The root to her canine tooth was dissolved from the infection. The vet removed the tooth, then cut away the tumor from her sinus cavities. Because the tumor was so extensive, he wasn't able to remove all of it without damaging her sinuses. He said the tumor will eventually grow back again, and that it will be impossible to ever cut it out again.
Belle is resting now, and occassionally she will sneeze out blood, and pawing at her nose. The danger now would be if the sutures came out, and food got up in her sinuses. I need to call the vet and get more information about that, but I plan on feeding her only soft food.
Have any of you been through anything like this? Wow, it's exhausting.
Sorry this is so long.