Before Nadine and I even had a chance to become accustomed to our new lives, a stressful roadblock was dropped in front of us. From Anti-Cruelty Society, I knew she would need extra veterinary care for her teeth and knees. That I was prepared for, but they turned out to be only the tip of the Nadine health problem iceberg. Maybe glacier is more apt?
We had made a preliminary visit to what would become her regular vet office, but she needed a booster shot a very specific period of time after her first shot received at Anti-Cruelty Society. She was at my parents at that point so my mom had to take Nadie to a local vet to get it. The vet couldn't just give Nadine a shot without a check-up, so the pooch had to go through another round of poking and prodding.
At Nadine's first check-up with me, she was still very wary and timid. When the vet tried to examine her belly, Nadine wouldn't roll over. Of course, I can't stop her from rolling over now for a belly rub, but in the early days, Nadine wasn't going to flash her six boobs to just anyone. Maybe she thinks she has a college tuition bill due or something... hoping Maverick next door might have a few singles in his wallet, perhaps?
In any case, her vet couldn't do a thorough exam of her belly at that time, but the vet my mom brought her to was able to. He found a very small mammary mass. With mammary masses in dogs, all you can do is remove them. There is no biopsy taken - the whole thing must be removed to determine if it's cancerous or benign. It's the only way and it meant Nadie would need to have surgery. Mammary masses are very common in dogs that have not been spayed before having a litter and it isn't unusual for dogs to have multiple masses, so this might not be the only time a mass appears. Each one may or may not be cancerous and there is only that one way to tell.
This meant that, on top of the teeth cleaning and extraction of two teeth that the vet had previously told me was required, Nadine would also need surgery to remove and test the mass. Poor dog had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I don't know who she pissed off in a previous life, but she was paying for it in this one!
Thankfully, surgery couldn't be for a few weeks, so she and I had a reprieve until then and I had time to consider it. Most of my Spain trip had been paid for months ago, luckily, but it would still be an expensive surgery. The teeth cleaning was perfect timing because she had to be under anesthesia anyway so the vet could do the mass removal at the same time. A surgery two-fer!
I joke, but it was a really stressful decision. I was crazy about this dog. In less than two weeks, she was a part of my family...whether my dad liked it or not. My friends loved her, my cousins and aunts thought she was adorably odd (therefore perfect for me), even strangers on the street stopped in their tracks to say hi and comment on her. My neighbor, who had never managed more than a grunt in my direction, stopped unexpectedly on his way to work the first time he ran into us. Looking slightly shocked and with a bemused, lopsided grin on his face, he stumbled out nearly an entire Yodic sentence! "Her tongue, always like that?"
It's just that, like many a great dog, Nadine makes people uncontrollably happy when they see her. Rough-looking kids traveling in packs on the street stop to say hi to her. They don't even keep up the act of being hard and bad-ass; they drop down to give her a scritch behind the ears and it's no matter that their friends are watching. Gay, straight, male, female, black, white, rich, homeless, young, old...everybody loves Nadine.
Mammary masses very often turn out to be benign, but I could only know by having it removed. What would I do if it was cancerous? I wasn't prepared to fight that with an older dog. In that case, what would be the point of removing it, if I had already made the decision? Had I made that decision? Could I really accept letting Nadine die so soon? Just letting cancer take over? This little black and white cookie was too sweet and crazy to lose, but realistically, cancer wasn't something my bank account, much less my heart, could take.
Finally, I chose to go ahead with the removal, since she was already scheduled for her teeth, but I feared what future decision I was going to be forced to make.
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