A great relief

Mandy

That pretty girl had us very worried over the past several days.

The story starts a few weeks ago. Mandy, who has had digestive issues over the years, once again was having diarrhea and other related issues (a fever, etc.). This has happened in the past, and a course of antibiotics and Lomotil always took care of it. So the vet put her on those, but the problems didn't go away.

When she went back to the vet last week, just before Christmas, he x-rayed her abdomen, and there was something there the size of a grown man's fist. He couldn't say conclusively without an ultrasound, but it looked like a large mass (just holding up the x-ray film to the light, I could see it clearly, and I normally can't make out anything on an x-ray). If it turned out to be solid, they'd need to biopsy it, but there was a good chance that a solid mass would mean... well, it would mean we'd soon be losing our little girl. I wanted to vent about it last week and thought of blogging about it, but I didn't want to bring anyone down right before Christmas (particularly since I know some of you know Mandy from visits here).

On Monday, she went back to the vet and had her ultrasound done. It took until today to get the results. It's NOT cancer. I'm so relieved that I'm nearly in tears now, just typing that. Amazingly, it's not any kind of mass. It's her stomach. Not where it should be and quite distended, so she needs some help with that, but it looks like it's a completely treatable problem.

It seems she has some kind of issue causing her stomach to back up, so we're doing smaller meals (and have been for several days) and spreading them out through the day as much as we can. Also, the vet had us pick up Pepcid from the drug store. It seems dogs can take the same medicine we do, so she's going to take half a pill twice a day to help her stomach be more comfortable and settle down.

Next week, we'll touch base with him. He may do another x-ray then to see where things are. She has a small nodule on her spleen, but he's not too concerned about that. We just have to help her get her digestion straightened out. If it doesn't resolve on its own, they may do endoscopy or (and I really hope this isn't needed) exploratory surgery to try to fix what ails her. So she may have some unpleasant (and expensive, of course) things ahead, but at least it looks like she'll be okay in the end. Considering that I was literally in tears last week, thinking she might be dying, this isn't so bad!