The Bearster 4/21/16

You just never know what each week will bring, do you?

Facebook friends have already heard about this, but some of you don’t do Facebook, and I wanted to share and ask for your prayers.

Bear had a grooming appointment on Monday.  When I went to pick him up he was still on the table, and his groomer asked me to step in the back so she could show me something.  Behind Bear’s right ear was a growth about the size of a dime that was bleeding pretty well.  The lady who washes Bear had found it when she was blowing him dry.  Every time one of us would touch it, it would gush more blood.

I honestly thought it was a scab that the washing lady had scrubbed off – maybe from a bug bite, or where he had scratched it on something when he rolls around on the grass.  But the groomer insisted I take him directly to our vet.  “I just don’t like the way it looks,” she said.

So I called Flagler Animal Hospital, and they said “Come on in now.”

By the time we got there, the sore had stopped bleeding, and after they cleaned it up, it looked like a bright red blood blister.  The vet said, “It’s a tumor – either a hemangioma (benign) or a hemangiosarcoma (malignant).  It’s impossible to tell them apart just by looking, so we’re going to need to take it off and send it to the University of Florida School of Veterinary Medicine for a pathology report.”

So this morning I dropped Bear off on my way to volunteer at the ER.  They removed the tumor and closed the wound with two stitches.  I picked him up around 1:00 this afternoon.  He’s still a little sleepy from the anesthesia but ate a little supper and seems to be doing fine.  He has pain meds, and he’ll be in his halo collar when we aren’t around to monitor him (so he won’t scratch his stitches out).

We were told it could take one to two weeks to get the results back.  The waiting is going to be hard.

Please remember Bear in your prayers.  We pray for a benign report and many more years with our precious boy.

God bless.