With just over a week to go before Christmas, we received some terrible news about Otto. He was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma. This is a rapidly spreading cancer that primarily affects bigger dogs. It’s rare in both people and Norfolk Terriers.
Dogs with this cancer typically die in a few months, because it’s usually discovered at a late stage of development. Discovery is often accompanied by a episode where the dog collapses from internal bleeding, which renders him too weak for surgery.
Otto’s health problems at the end of 2014 didn’t start with the hemangiosarcoma diagnosis. On Thursday 12/4/14, we took him to the Hope Center in Vienna, VA for a diagnostic ultrasound because he has a history of oxalate bladder stones. He was constantly scratching his crotch, and we thought he might have some stones that needed to come out. He’s had them before and exhibited similar behavior. The stones are like daggers which can cause discomfort. If they obstruct his ability to urinate they can lead to life-threatening conditions if they’re not removed by surgery. The frequent stops to scratch were also really slowing down our group activities. Routine diagnostics should be nothing more than a short road trip followed by biscuits, and that’s what we were expecting.
When Otto got back from the ultrasound that evening, he appeared sick. We could tell he wasn’t his usual self. He sat down for our evening meal together and trooped along on our usual nighttime activities, so we were hoping he was just mentally drained from missing us all day. We didn’t see any bruising at this point, which went along with our attributing his behavior to a long day at the vet’s office. Over the weekend, his energy level was improving, but we could tell he was still not feeling well.
By Tuesday, with not much progress, we figured it was time to call in the experts, so we pushed Otto to visit Dr. Goldsmith at Great Falls Animal Hospital. Otto’s not one to go on and on about his health, so we had to nudge him a bit. At least his spirits seemed good as he headed out the door. By the time he got to the vet, things had taken a turn for the worse. Dr. Goldsmith saw a lot of bruising, but there wasn’t a good explanation for what caused it. When Otto came home and mentioned bruising, we had to take a look and see for ourselves.
When we did, we were in shock at what we saw.
We’re not experts, but just as the doctor said, that picture showed bruising from internal bleeding. Was it the stress of an ultrasound that caused it? Was he so fragile that even a little pressure from the ultrasound caused him to bleed? It was all probably just a coincidence, because as we’d soon learn, you never know when these problems flare up.
This was a situation that required close monitoring, so the next day, we persuaded Otto to roll on his back so we could have another look. The string of shocks continued.
In just 1 day, it seemed like things were getting worse, not better. To our eyes, the red areas seemed bigger and a deeper shade of red. That night, we got in touch with Dr. Anke Langenbach at Veterinary Surgical Centers, and she said Otto needed to come in first thing in the morning.
Dr. Langenbach did an ultrasound and found that in just 1 week, Otto’s adrenal gland had expanded in size quite a bit. Having 2 ultrasounds one week apart helped to compare things. The bruising was caused by internal bleeding, but until she performed surgery she wouldn’t know more. At this point, Otto had lost a lot of blood, so surgery was risky. But doing nothing was risky too. She expressed a lot of concern about his ability to survive surgery, so we were very worried. Surgery is never fun, but we concluded we had to do our best to get this fixed, and that meant surgery.
Late in the afternoon on Thursday 12/11/14, Dr. Langenbach operated on Otto. She discovered his adrenal gland was the source of the bleeding, so she had to perform an adrenalectomy to remove it. In a previous ultrasound that Otto already described, his vet saw a nodule on his spleen. Dr. Langebach saw that in the 7 months that passed, there were a few more nodules, but nothing that seemed to be at the crisis state.
As we all know, Otto is one heck of a fighter. He made it through a long, tough surgery, and on Saturday, we were there to pick him up from the hospital. Dr. Langenbach shared some of the challenges she faced with Otto’s surgery. There’s an important vein near the adrenal gland, so you’ve got to have steady hands for this type of work. She had to make the on-the-spot decision on what to do with Otto’s spleen. If the nodules flared up soon, they could present a problem. Since he had already lost a lot of blood, she opted just to do a biopsy and get him into recovery mode as quickly as possible. We probably missed a lot of the medical details because we were excited to be walking out the door with Otto, but we all left relieved and smiling.
Unfortunately, the fun times didn’t last long. Just after 7 PM on December 16th, Dr. Langenbach called to deliver the bad news that Otto had hemangiosarcoma. She said this was very bad.
We had to quickly kick it into gear to get Otto the best treatment. The bad news of her call was like a punch in the face. But we’re Norfolk Terriers. After a little licking of our wounds, we knew we were going to punch back.
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