She's home

Bernice is back home. She had her surgery yesterday. They felt she'd do best if she stayed overnight. It seems the mass on her chest was more extensive than it first appeared, so they wanted to keep her chest in a pressure wrap (so the space didn't fill with fluid) and keep her sedated overnight. They did that, and they say everything looks good, so now she's home.

She was still dopey from meds when she came home. In fact, she was literally cross-eyed at one point. Now she's just exhausted (and having some pain, I would think).

It's nice to have her home. I just hope she feels better quickly. I also hope she's cured, but the doctor said that there's a fair chance the mass will recur in future. It was deep, with it having some reaching into the space between her ribs. So, as the vet said, "we hope we got 100 percent of it, but there's no way to know if we only got 99 percent."

We'll know more in a couple of days, after the tissue sent to the lab is analyzed. And whatever they say, there's no telling how long it will be gone, if it ever comes back. For that matter, it may never come back. That, of course, is what we're hoping for.

If it does come back, it may go even deeper and go into her chest cavity. To fix that would require something that I don't think would be right. They would have to remove ribs, muscles... in short, I think the pain and difficulty probably would be too much, especially since it probably would only give her a bit more time and, as a terrible trade-off, would turn a big chunk of her remaining days into painful ones. We'll have to decide what to do if that day comes, but my thought at this point is that we'll just let things run their course and let her live with it as long as she's not in pain.

For now, she has to work on her recovery. I hope they did get every bit of it, and I hope it never comes back. At 11 years old, I know she doesn't have a lot of years left, but I hope she has at least a few more and that they're healthy, happy ones. Time will tell.