Our Indy

Our almost 12 year old Black Lab, Indy (Indiana), has cancer. She had chewed off one of her dewclaws and it got infected...or that's what we thought. The swelling wasn't going away, so we took her to the vet. He wanted to remove it, so we scheduled an appointment for the minor surgery. When we picked her up afterwards, the Dr. said that while she was "under" he wanted to do a touch-up on her teeth, and when he did, he found another growth inside her lower lip. He showed me both growths and said he was sending them to the lab.

He also told me that when he went to trim one of her nails (on the same paw as the growth), it literally fell off! He didn't like that at all.

Indy was all bandaged up that evening and a little sluggish, but otherwise doing fine.

A few days later, my son took her in to get her bandage changed. As he was on his way there, the Dr. called me at work and old me that the results were back and that the growth on her dewclaw was a squamous cell carcinoma and the one from her mouth was a melanoma. He told Sam about it when he and Indy got there.

The margins of what he removed were pretty good and clean, so that's good...but he wants to amputate her little toe, the one that the nail fell off of. He doesn't want to take chances and feels that it would be best. I agree. Losing a little toe won't really affect her much. Hell, if he wanted to remove her whole paw, I'd let him if it meant giving her a year or two more of life!

So, next Wednesday, Indy goes back for more surgery. We'll discuss further treatment then...the Dr. says there's a vaccine that's been good against melanomas, and if it is right for her, we may give it to her. It's not cheap, but she is worth it.

So keep Indy in your thoughts and I'll post more next week on her surgery.