Current location:	sofa, with Byron beside me
Current mood:	relieved
Current music:	new Iron Maiden album
Entry tags:	animals, f-list is made of awesome

I picked Byron up from the vet's this teatime, and he was very sorry for himself, and still somewhat groggy from the anaesthetic.



The first thing the vet did was take his blood and test it. Apparently his liver and kidney function and white blood cells and stuff are all fine, which is a good thing. Then he put him under and started trying to sort the lump out.

The vet told me that he'd never seen the contents of a lump be quite like this one. A cyst is normally opaque, pussy liquid; a tumour is normally one big lump, possibly with a bit of tissue fluid round it. The contents of Byron's lump were a lot of transparent fluid, with lots of little bits of tissue floating in it. He said the bits of tissue were sort of fibrous, and crumbly. He's sent some of them off for testing, and some of the fluid too.

He had to cut quite a lot away to get rid of all the nasty, and the wound is therefore quite big - about 9 inches long.



Anyway, the upshot is that we still don't know what it was, but it's been removed. The vet says if it turns out to have been malignant it will almost certainly come back, because the composition of it made it impossible to be sure he'd got every last bit, although he tried his best. Byron has to go back on Saturday morning to have his wound checked, at which point we should hopefully have the lab results too. He has to have the bucket on his head until the stitches come out (those of you who have seen our house will know how much fun that is) and he's not allowed off his lead for at least 10 days. And he's on anti-biotics, which he hates taking.

But he's still alive, and he is almost certain of complete recovery if it's non-malignant. I don't want to think about if it is malignant, but we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it...

Thank you all so much for making this possible. I don't have the words to express how much it means to me. Byron is my hairy baby, and we've been through so much together. Thank you all for giving me the opportunity to spend a bit longer with him. And I will be posting the stuff you bought out soon. At the moment, I am just clinging to him.

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