Pre-op day!
So I had to wait a week for the surgery and the last 2 days my pain came back like it was before. The gabapentin wasn’t making a difference anymore. We met the oncology/clinical trial and surgical teams at 1030 on Thursday Oct 6. Mom works in a hospital and says the vet hospital works just like a human hospital. Everything had already been organized for me to get my pre op stuff done. My chest xrays were done last week and were clear of metastisis-yay! For the trial I needed to have an abdominal u/s and a needle aspiration of the tumor. Mom asked why that was necessary since they would test the tumor after surgery. Everyone agreed it was dumb, but the trial is run by some big cancer people (NCI) and they said we had to. I met the 2 young lady doctors who would be doing my surgery and another older doctor who would be supervising them. They were SO nice and petted and scratched me in all the right places. Mom says she cried when they led me off for my tests. I didn’t see it, I was happily going along because I heard the word TREAT.
A few hours later they called my mom with bad news. They hadn’t been able to get a needle in the tumor (it didn’t hurt btw- I was zonked). They called the NCI again, but they wouldn’t budge. I was out of the trial! The doctors were really upset. They said I was a perfect candidate and I don’t bite like the other dogs in the trial. Of course I don’t bite. It’s against the golden retriever code and I’m pretty sure the treats and belly rubs would stop. They didn’t do the ultrasound since there was no point, but they had already shaved my belly. I’m always hot so that’s ok. So, I had some more blood taken and just hung out waiting for surgery the next day. One of the student surgeons took me for a walk and that was nice, but I didn’t like being locked up away from mom.
I’m going to let mom tell about my surgery because I don’t remember much to be honest. Check out the Surgery Day page!
