Well....Just...Holy Crap...

Maybe there was a reason for my hair standing on end this morning.  (See earlier post).

Allow me to digress...

Nearly two Thursdays ago--the day my sister arrived for the family weekend--Max sort of stumbled on our morning walk.  I thought he'd stepped on a burr or a nettle, so lifted his foot to see why he was suddenly limping and found this odd...thing...on one pad of his left foot.  It looked like a weird warty bump of some kind.  After the removal of that small cancerous tumor on his chest in January, I didn't want to ignore it and came home, called the vet, then my sister and I took him on Friday afternoon.  They tried to get a cell sample, but there was also a slight infection that skewed the reading.  The vet said this bump is either a small cut that has sealed over, leaving a bit of debris behind; or possibly another cancerous growth.  Max gets an antibiotic shot, and we have to wait ten days to try again for another sample.  Shit.

Once Max got over the horrors of the vet experience--two needles shoved into his owie and a big ol' shot--he settled down and seemed to feel better, though since that day he's hopped on three legs, rarely putting the foot down on the ground unless it's soft grass or the carpet.

So.  Fast forward.  This afternoon was his appointment to check things again, and take another cell sample.  I was a bit worried, but stayed positive and really, I was fairly confident all would be well.

I should have listened to my hair.

This Thursday, Max has to have his toe amputated.  Ah, the poor, poor wee boy.

****Eeewwwww....pant, pant.  Okay, okay, deep breaths. 

'Scuse me a sec while major squirming and gulping commence****

 

Sorry.  It's the visual that seems to be freaking me out...

 

Okay.  Better.

 

Now, I totally, unequivocally trust my vet.  He said he could try to cut the bump off, but because it's on a pad, it will be a) very difficult to excise a large enough area to ensure there is no more cancer and b) there won't be enough left of the area to adequately suture the wound.  The safest, easiest and best option for Max is to just remove the whole toe, pad and all.

 

I gotta say that I'm a bit concerned about all this. Two cancerous bumps in four months is pretty alarming, at least to me, to say nothing of putting Max through another surgery so soon after the first, though my vet assures me everything will go fine, and I trust him.

What I don't trust at the moment is my stomach.  Time for wine.  I need something to blur the images in my head...