Well I just had Alfie at the vet as I noticed a lump on his leg the night before last. It's about 2cm in diameter, hairless, very raised up and quite an angry looking almost wet-look dark pink in colour and I thougt it was probably a histiocytoma although it doesn't really look like any of the lumps posted on Sheryl's histiocytoma thread on here the other day.
After having been to the vet the upshot is that the news is potentially not so good, the vet didn't like the look of the lump and she called in one of the other vets to look and neither did they so Alfie was taken off into a back room to be sedated and have cells aspirated from it to send to the lab. The vet suspects that there may be a chance that it is a mast cell tumour which is a potentially aggressive cancer
Having just come back and looked it up on the net his lump does look pretty much identical to the pictures of some of the tumours on the various websites I've found. Apparently they come in grades so if it is bad news then we're hoping for a grade one which is relatively easily treated with surgery although a very large margin around the actual lump would need to be removed and I don't know how that would work as it's on a very narrow part of his leg but I can't think of that just now
So we just have to wait and see, I won't hear anything until the end of next week as the lab is swamped due to the Christmas/New Year backlog. The boy is fine in himself, he's out for the count beside me on the sofa just now, he was looking very wobbly and sorry for himself after the sedative though and the lump is now slightly bigger and has gone red which is not a particularly good sign. So basically I'm asking for good thougts for him for next week please, he's such a happy go lucky, active dog the thought of anything being wrong with him just doesn't make sense.
