Frankendog

Fair warning: there are photos of Nemo with stitches/staples in this post. They aren't really graphic or gross (I think), but if that sort of thing bothers you, you might not want to keep reading. But just so you know, Nemo's okay :)

Now on with the real post...

About a week ago Mr. T and I found a small pea-size lump below Nemo's right ear. We're super vigilant about having any odd lumps and bumps checked out on Nemo, because he's had a mast cell tumor before and it's important to catch them early before they turn into something worse. We had the vet take a look and while chances are good that it's nothing, he was concerned enough that he recommended having the lump removed. So that's what we did yesterday.

And now Nemo looks like Frankendog.

Nemo's not worried about a possible scar ruining his stellar good looks. Chicks dig scars.

Unlike last time, Nemo wasn't put under full anesthesia to have this lump removed, so he was back to himself pretty quickly. There was no "drunk dog" behavior to get over this time, and Nemo was feeling good again by the time I picked him up from the vet just a couple hours after the procedure. A little sedation and they were able to remove the whole lump (plus some "margins" to make sure they got everything, which is why the incision looks so big).

Even though it was a relatively small procedure, that didn't stop me from worrying about him all day.

While he was at the vet getting things removed anyway, the vet also took off a big skin tag that was on his back leg. I'll spare you a before photo of it, but trust me when I say it was the biggest, grossest, most icky skin tag I've ever seen on a dog. We weren't going to have it removed at all because it wasn't medically necessary (it's just cosmetic and I don't like to put the dogs through medical procedures they don't actually need), but since he was going to be sedated anyway the vet went ahead and zapped it off for us.

And, while the vet was at it, he also decided to zap off the wart under Nemo's eye too. The wart was another thing that didn't really have to get done right now, (it never bothered me - unlike the skin tag which actually did bother me because it was so gross), but I could tell it bothered our vet. I like to think that Nemo's view is a little clearer now that it's gone. (To be fair to our vet and to make sure no one gets the idea that he just likes removing stuff for no reason: the wart could grow over time making removing it in the future necessary so doing it now did make sense, it just wasn't an immediate concern.) 

That wart may be gone now, but Nemo's face remains as cute as ever.

While he we was at the vet, we also had a blood test done for Nemo's isulinoma. When Nemo's insulinoma diagnosis was made, it was based on the symptoms he was exhibiting when he had his seizure, but they couldn't see anything definitive on the ultrasound they conducted. We've been treating Nemo based on the assumption that he does have it, but I admit that T and I have been mixed parts skeptical, hopeful, and cautious that there's a chance he doesn't have it. We've been testing his blood glucose levels regularly (I owe you a post about that) and he's tested in the normal range every single time. It's still much more likely that he does have insulinoma (three different vets now have all said that they think he has it), so I'm not getting my hopes up or anything, but given his results so far we wanted to make sure with this test (which we were told is pretty new so that's why it wasn't done before).

When I finally got to bring Nemo home yesterday - after all that testing and sedating and lump removing - I thought the little dude more than deserved a nice frozen peanut butter filled Kong.

Peanut butter Kongs have clinically proven healing powers.

In a few days we'll get the test results back - to find out if the lump that was removed was a mast cell tumor and the blood test for his insulinoma - and in a couple weeks he'll get his staples removed when he's all healed up.

Until then I'll be hanging out with my little stitched-up Frankendog.