Benign and doing fine

It was a nerve-wracking week at my house last week as we worried about the sudden appearance of a growth over Loki's eyelid.

On Christmas Day, it was just a tiny little bald spot. A week later, New Year's Day, it was a noticeable lump, and two days later it was turning red and ugly. The vet said it could either be a harmless histiocytoma or a mast cell tumor, which is cancerous, but she couldn't tell without sticking a needle in it and taking a sample.

Because the lump was so close to Loki's eye, and Loki would barely hold still to let us look at it, let alone poke at it, the vet said she couldn't aspirate it without sedating Loki.

The plan was to treat it was with a topical ointment for a week and see if it responded, which would mean it was the harmless histiocytoma. If it didn't respond, we would remove it.

We couldn't chance it getting any bigger because if it was a mast cell tumor, we needed to be able to remove it with clean margins to make sure we got all the mast cells, and being on the eyelid, there wasn't a lot of extra tissue to work with.

We were especially worried about it being a mast cell tumor because Loki had a previous grade 2 mast cell tumor removed from her belly in late 2007.

The lump continued to get uglier throughout the week, so on Friday Loki went in to have it removed.

At the last minute, we noticed a second lump on Loki, this one on her lower lip. It was right where her canine tooth hits, which the vet said meant it could be a simple callus, but since she only had it on one side of her mouth, not both, it might be something more so she'd go ahead and remove that lump, too, during Loki's surgery.

Fortunately, Loki came through her surgery fine, with a small shaved patch over her eye and some pretty white stitches. The vet was pleased with the margins she got on both lumps, and promptly sent them off to the lab for analysis.

Loki has been good and barely notices her stitches. She hasn't had to wear her cone since the first night, and really likes to take her medicine, which we hide in a big glop of peanut butter, swallowed whole.

The vet called my husband yesterday with the lab results. The lump over the eye was indeed a histiocytoma. Good news! And the lump on her lip was a benign tumor. The vet was very pleased. I don't have any more information than that. I plan to ask more questions when we bring Loki in to get her stitches removed on Monday.