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Old February 18th, 2015, 08:55 PM
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Myka Myka is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Saskatoon, SK.
Posts: 945
Well, the second doctor didn't say anything different, but definitely did clear things up for me.

She explained to me that ALL tumors are cancerous. I didn't realize that. I thought benign meant non-cancer, and malignant meant cancer. That's not true; "tumor" is synonymous with "cancer". She said benign means non-invasive, local cancer. Malignant means invasive, and spreading throughout the body. So, in female dogs there is a 50/50 chance that a breast tumor is malignant or benign. There is also a small chance that the lump is ONLY an abscess, but she can't tell without cutting her open. She also agreed that biopsy is not a good route. She said because of the abscess around the assumed tumor, it could be very easy to miss the tumor and get a false negative on a biopsy, and for not even double the price we can just get the whole thing removed.

She said time is of the essence. She said if we want to do the surgery we need to get a move on as soon as possible. Although she also said that if we can shrink the abscess at all that would be really good because she needs 3 cm clean margins. That's a lot of tissue. Also, she's not concerned about Roxy's enlarged heart because she is asymptomatic.

So at this point Roxy is on Metacam daily and we started an antibiotic called Apo-Amoxi Clav today to see if we can shrink the lump one way or another. We also want to see the affect of the antibiotic just to cross off the small possibility that it is indeed just an infection. Oddly, our Chihuahua, Peewee likes to lick her nipples so there is an off chance he introduced bacteria from his mouth to a small cut she had on her nipple.
__________________
Ella - Jun '20 - Reg AmStaff
Squeak - '15/16? - Tabby cat (adopted Nov '18)
Streak - '18 - Black cat (adopted Nov '18)
Peewee - Jan '06 - 6.5 lb Chi (adopted May '09)
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Roxy - Feb '05 to May '20 AmStaff (adopted Jul '11)
Myka - Nov '98 to Jan '10 - APBT X
Lacy - Sep '92 to Jul '03 - Sheltie

Last edited by Myka; February 19th, 2015 at 09:54 AM.
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