Chloe’s Surgery is Scheduled For Real This Time!

Today Chloe had her appointment with the veterinary surgeon, Dr. Watson (coincidentally, she is Riley’s surgeon as well!).  She is having her surgery on Tuesday, March 15th.  The surgery will be to remove the spleen and mass, fix her “apparent” bladder nodule, and remove one of her fatty benign tumors on her chest.  They will do a biopsy of the splenic mass and the bladder nodule to check for cancer.

She has to be on exercise restriction for 2 weeks–no running, jumping, stairs, or furniture–and leash walks only.  That means that with Riley living here, Chloe is going to have to stay in the crate for the two weeks or else she will try to play with the “Riled Child” and will most definitely try to jump on the furniture.  The doctor said that if she jumps on the furniture, she could open the sutures and that we will quote “have intestines everywhere.”  Yuck.  Chloe does NOT tolerate being in a crate…at all.  She fusses and stresses out the entire time and doesn’t settle down.  The first night we had her, we made her sleep in the crate…she cried and barked the ENTIRE night and she managed to get the pan out of the bottom of the wire crate and ate through the carpet and carpet pad.  So she’s never been crated at home since then.  She actually (on two different occasions) broke both of her top canine teeth trying to bite and pull on the bars of a kennel…had to get root canals on both teeth–$700 each.  So…we’re thinking that we’re going to have to get a sedative for her so that she can actually rest in the crate and not stress herself physically or mentally.  She’ll be using Riley’s crate, so it’s plenty big for her, but that won’t matter to Chloe!

Anyway, that’s what’s going on in the world of Chloe.  I have been reading most of your blogs but haven’t had time to comment on them.  I got a letter from my college today saying that my request for graduation from the Pre-Nursing Career Studies Certificate program had been approved!!  It’s not an Associate’s Degree, but it is progress!  It has only taken me 6 or 7 years to get this far…!  My grade is in for my 8 week Principles of Nutrition class and I got an A.  Actually, and I’m going to brag a little bit so bear with me, an A was 900-1000 points.  There were 45 extra credit points available, so the max grade you could get was 1045.  I got 1044 points.  🙂  Overachiever much?  I’d say so.

Scratch That…Chloe’s Surgery is Not Scheduled

We got a call from the vet last night and she said that she had discussed Chloe’s surgery with all the other doctors at the practice and they decided that they probably weren’t the best people to do the surgery.  They said they could do the spleen surgery, no problem, but if the polyp in her bladder ended up being anything other than that, they would have to send her to the surgeon.  So…they said that we should go to the surgeon’s office to have it done so that Chloe wouldn’t have to have two surgeries.

The surgeon is actually Riley’s surgeon (for her hips…I guess these people do it all!) and we have to take Chloe to (another) consultation next Thursday at 3:00.  Luckily, the surgeon is located the next city over from us and it is a 10 or 15 minute drive, so not bad.

My dad called to see if the specialist in Chesapeake that we saw last week could send the ultrasound and X-rays over to this new surgeon’s office.  The lady on the phone said that they could burn the ultrasound to a disc but that they couldn’t mail it…we would have to go pick it up.  What the crap??  Seriously, lady?  We had to drive like 45 minutes to get there.  And we paid them almost $450…so you honestly can’t throw it in an envelope and slap a stamp on it and send it!?  Outrageous.  Needless to say, we’re not happy and my dad is calling them back today to try to talk them into mailing it…so we’ll see.

Chloe on her usual perch…sleeping the day away.

Chloe’s Prognosis

Well, we got some hopeful news today at the veterinary internist/oncologist’s office.  They did a $350 ultrasound(!!!) and discovered that she has a polyp in her bladder which could be causing all of her infections and that her mass doesn’t look like the typical malignant spleen mass, so that’s promising.  They shaved her belly to get good contact while they were doing the ultrasound, so her belly reminds me of a little piglet’s belly!  🙂  I didn’t get a picture of it tonight though.

The specialist was going to send his notes and recommendations over to her regular vet.  She needs to have a chest X-ray to make sure the mass hasn’t spread to her lungs, and then she can have surgery to have the mass and spleen removed and while they’re doing that surgery she can have the polyp removed from her bladder.  We have to call the vet’s office sometime next week to see when we can schedule the X-ray and her surgery.

Here are some pictures we took:

The tunnel on the way over.

Driving by the Navy base.

In the waiting room.

Back in the exam room, waiting on the doctor.  Everyone had to tell us how good and sweet Chloe was.