dog drama.

So we've been having some dog issues this week. What fun.

E, our Golden, has had a growth inside her mouth for a few months now. When I first noticed it, I decided just to keep an eye on it and see what happens rather than rush her to a vet. Well, it's been progressively getting bigger and bigger. And at a much faster pace than any of the other odd growths she has on her body (older dogs tend to have weird things growing all over their bodies, I swear).

Well it started bleeding on Tuesday evening and I guess because it's made of gum tissue, it was hard to get it to stop bleeding. Our regular vet is closed on Wednesdays, so I took her to another vet in town that came highly recommended on Wednesday morning.

The vet wasn't very encouraging. He said he's worried it's cancer. That 50% of growths in the mouth that he sees are cancer. So we had a full workup done that day. Blood work, x-rays, and a biopsy of the growth. To the tune of $650, ugh.

Luckily, her blood work and x-rays came back fine. No indication of cancer. Although he said she does have a low thyroid level and a UTI. He said it's possible it's related to the growth. If it's cancer. We won't get the results of the biopsy until early next week probably. He said not to get our hopes up too high because there is still a chance the biopsy would come back with bad news, regardless of her blood work and x-rays.

So I brought her home Wednesday evening and had to break the news to B. He wasn't happy. E is "his" dog. She showed up on our doorstep about 5 years ago and he has been in love with her ever since. But I told him there is still a possibility that everything will be fine. If it's not cancer, then she will have surgery on Tuesday to remove the growth and her 4 front teeth, since it has now grown around those and they need to remove them to completely get the growth out. To the tune of another $500, weeeee.

As all of this is sinking in, I come home last night from work, let the dogs out, and then sit down to relax on the couch. About 20 minutes later, I start to notice that E's eyes look funny. They looked puffy. When B got home a short time later, I asked him if they looked funny to him too and he said yes. After a while, it became obvious that she was having some kind of reaction to something. Her eyes were all puffy and red, and when I felt her ears, those were starting to swell. I started Googling like a mad woman and determined that she was either having a reaction to the antibiotics or she was bit by something when she was rolling around in the grass earlier that evening.

I gave her some Benedryl but didn't notice it really do anything to help. Luckily, her breathing seemed normal. I kept checking on her to make sure that didn't change though. She seemed uncomfortable and kept shaking her head a lot, but otherwise didn't seem to be in distress. So we kept an eye on her all night and she seemed to do fine. I think the Benedryl helped her sleep some.

I called the vet again this morning and they had me bring her in again. They gave her a cortisone shot and told me to keep giving her Benedryl twice a day. They think it's unlikely that she would have had a delayed reaction to the antibiotics like that, so they are leaning towards it being an allergic reaction to a bug bite. They also said that since nothing life threatening happened to her overnight, that she is in the clear in that regard. So now we just wait for the swelling to go down. And they told me to avoid giving her any more antibiotic until Monday, just in case that does end up being the issue.

So it's been a fun week. It seems like the entire week has been stressful. And expensive. I was all excited because we managed to sell an extra set of wheels and tires this week and were getting about $500 for them. So I was thinking I could use that money to buy a nice recliner for the baby's room. Not anymore.

And the stress isn't even over yet. We still have to wait for the results of the biopsy to know what we're dealing with. I'll post an update once we know more.