Well, we went back to the vet today. Her lymph nodes seem to really be responding to antibiotics, which is a good sign. However, ultrasound revealed that she does have some sort of tumor on her thyroid. Somewhere around 70 to 80% of the time, thyroid tumors are malignant. However, we’ve caught it very early. The doc doesn’t think it actually has anything to do with what made her sick initially, we just happened to find it while trying to figure out what else was going on. So, he has recommended that we remove it surgically, along with her lymph node. Both of them will be biopsied. Hopefully, we get good news and they find no malignant cancer. If that is the case, then all of the past few weeks will not be a limiting factor in her lifespan. However, statistics suggest that it will be malignant. With any luck, we’ll get a few more years, but then the cancer will probably show up somewhere else in her body.
The only sort of good news out of all this is that we’ve managed to get a pretty high ranking doctor out of it. I guess Emma’s case was pretty weird, so they called in their big guns. He feels bad about how we’ve been jerked around and spent a lot of money just in an effort to figure out what was wrong. So, he’s agreed to cap the expenses for her surgery and everything at an amount that, while high, is approachable for us.
So.. anyway.. there’s that.
June 26, 2009 at 8:02 am
Just heard the good news about Emma! I’m SOOO glad she is going to be OK. She may not be my favorite family pet ever, but I still think she IS pretty sweet and adorable!