Waiting - Part Two

We visited the Iron Bitch last night and this morning and she looks much, much better.  In fact, you'd hardly know that she has been so sick.  That made us feel really good, although I couldn't help but feel bad that the poor pup doesn't know what she's about to go through.

So, in a few minutes, she will go into surgery and they will try to remove all of the 4 inch tissue mass and whatever portion of the pericardium is involved.  This is some pretty serious surgery, so the first hurdle today is getting her through the procedure itself.  She's a very tough little beagle and should do well, but it is nerve-wracking nonetheless. 

The second hurdle will be knowing if they could remove the whole mass.  They can't fully visualize it using ultra-sound, so they won't know until they are inside whether parts of it are too close to sensitive nerves or vasculature for removal.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that the whole mass can be resected completely.

And that's where we will be at the end of the day.  The procedure takes about an hour and half, so we should know by 5 o'clock how things have gone.

The last hurdle will be the histopathology report on the tissue mass.  Obviously, we are hoping it is non-cancerous, which would indicate a very good prognosis for her.

In the midst of our stress, we had to laugh when we realized that this whole thing is classic Maggie.  Only she could have a huge tissue mass near her heart, a heart sac filled with nearly half a liter of fluid and, by the way, a GI parasite that needed to be flushed, and still walk around with nothing worse than a strange cough.

That dog is tough, I tell you.