Jon’s dog Susie is having a rough time. She’s had a lump on her throat for a while now, but in the past week or so it has suddenly grown much bigger. Jon took her to the vet yesterday and she was so freaked out they couldn’t get much of an x-ray, for fear the stress would kill her right then: she was breathing really heavy on the examination table, frothing at the mouth. Jon scheduled an exploratory surgery for tomorrow afternoon, but we don’t have much hope of them being able to fix the problem.

The vet thinks it’s a thyroid tumor and he doesn’t know if it’ll be removable fully, or if it’s cancerous and may have spread to the rest of her body. The lump on her throat compresses her airway such that she has to really force the air in and out to breathe. The poor girl has just laid around panting the past few days, sounding like she has the worst asthma ever. She’s been eating fine and doesn’t seem to have much problem swallowing food, but sometimes she seems to have trouble just swallowing in general.

Jon gave her half a cheese pizza tonight and I’ve been feeding her slices of ham, just trying to make her happy before tomorrow in case they have to put her down. :( If they’re unable to get a breathing tube down her throat because of the tumor blocking the passage, they won’t be able to do the surgery, and the vet suggested it would be best to put her down then. It won’t get better on its own, so they have to operate or she’ll just continue as she is or get worse. Jon’s parents are going to visit tomorrow to say goodbye to her, just in case, before Jon takes her to the vet. She’s about ten years old now, so she really ought to be able to live a few more years if it weren’t for this. Hopefully they’ll be able to operate and remove the tumor, or whatever it is, and it won’t be malignant. We don’t know how much it’ll cost, but the vet told Jon he would give him a good rate because he’s curious about what the lump is, too.

I took this photo of Susie today while she was resting on Jon’s lap.