When I posted a photo of Drake the other day on Instagram, I had some questions about how he's doing. It just warms my heart to know people are thinking about him!
After the initial incident in early January where we noticed he was licking his arm -- to the point of removing (with his sandpapery tongue) a deep chunk of the skin and tissue -- the healing process began. For Drake this meant antibiotics, steroids, and a cone. We are done with the pills now, but he still is a conehead. At night, when we can keep a very close watch on him, we like to give him some time outside the cone, but a few times he has gone for his arm and then the cone has to go right back on.
This photo is from last night -- he was occupied enough with a rawhide and then a big bone that we were able to leave him cone-free for quite some time while he was in the room with us.
Now comes the "insult to injury" part. For a long while we have been monitoring with our vet a growth on his chest that has progressively enlarged. The vet has aspirated it before (removed some of the fluid with a needle), but it keeps growing. We check it constantly and touch it gently to see if he ever has a pained reaction -- so far, nothing. But this week I noticed that he had a boo-boo on the growth where either he rubbed it against something and it was scratched, or -- I don't even know if this is possible -- maybe even the stretched skin grew so thin that it opened a bit? We had him in the vet the next morning.
The vet has spoken to us before about surgically removing it, but with Drake being 14, we were more concerned about him going under anesthesia than we were with a non-painful bump. The vet supported our decision. This time around, the topic of surgery came up once again. He thinks it may be a sarcoma, which he said can potentially grow to volleyball size. VOLLEYBALL size.
We have a tentative surgery date scheduled mid-month for the Drakester and I'm really nervous. I know he is growing older, but I just want him to meet our daughter so badly. Furthermore, selfishly, I have a lot of anxiety about thinking of Drake not being around and how the extreme sadness that we would feel could affect my pregnancy. I have tried really hard during this time to only let Baby Girl experience the best of life in utero -- happiness, love, belly rubs, peanut butter cups, Beyonce.
If you have any words of wisdom, please do send them my way. And we would appreciate all of the good thoughts and prayers for our Drake that you could send!
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