Do you know what a hematoma is? It’s like an enormous blood blister. You nick a blood vessel somehow and then the vessel leaks. It fills up the area around it with blood and swells up like a grapefruit.
Cayce somehow has a hematoma on his back, near the site of the surgery. It’s totally gross looking but isn’t bothering him any and it’s not infected so we’re leaving it alone for right now. It may take weeks or months for the body to reabsorb all the fluid and the lump to disappear.
In this picture, you can see the lump from two different directions. The lump is not his shoulderblades sticking up, it’s a soft and squishy swelling about the size of a softball.
I just heard from the vet that Oscar’s tumor is hemangiosarcoma. It is a malignant. *If* it has spread, and it goes untreated, he has 9-18 mos expectancy. If he has chemotherapy, he would have to go in for treatments once every three weeks. Probable side effects of nausea, etc. Not to mention cost thousands of dollars. He’s 12. I can’t put my dog through that! Oh dear…
Comment by — October 12, 2006 @ 4:24 pm