If you are at all squeamish, don’t read this post. Just a heads up to anyone who doesn’t like blood or gross growths.
So for everyone who likes blood and gross things, here’s what we went through last week.
My main man Zack is old, really old. He is a large lab and he is 14 years old, that is ancient for a lab. I love him dearly, but things just aren’t going as great for him lately. He got pneumonia a couple weeks ago and for a minute I thought he wasn’t going to make it. My boss generously let me miss work and bring him to the vet ASAP because he was having trouble breathing. They did Xrays and listened to his chest, turned out it was pneumonia and they got him on some strong antibiotics. Thank god those antibiotics did their thing and made my pup better. For a while now Zack has had a growth in his ear, just a little skin tag. During his pneumonia episode this thing got huge! I mean HUGE! The vet said his immune system was probably shot and the skin tag got infected. His body couldn’t fight the infection, so it swelled.
I ignored it for the time being because I was more concerned about his pneumonia. So since the pneumonia was gone it was now time to deal with this growth. Not only did it keep getting bigger it started bleeding, A LOT! Justin and I would get home from work and find Zack laying in a puddle of blood. Also there would be speckles of blood all over the walls from him shaking his head. I started wrapping his head like so…
So once he was good to go on the pneumonia, it was time to get rid of this sucker… I brought him back to vet and they listened to his lungs and they said he was good to go. Two days later I brought him in for his surgery. I used to work at the vet I bring him to, so I requested to stay with him during the surgery and I also that they don’t put him completely under that they just sedate him. I was so worried that if they put him completely under that he won’t wake up due to his age. I am not completely nuts, I swear. They would sedate him and numb the whole area where his growth is, then take it off and he shouldn’t feel a thing. They have actually done this once before, when he had an infected skin tag on his lip. That time I held him and he was completely fine during the whole thing. Although that growth was much smaller. The vet said they would try that method again, but they may need to give him propofol if the sedation wasn’t enough. Also they said I could stay in the building, but I couldn’t be in the room. They said I was too nervous and would make them nervous as well. I love this dog more than anything and they know that. I begged to stay and they said I could, but as soon as I was being annoying they would make me leave. Fortunately, I wasn’t quite that annoying and got some pictures for you!
In this picture he has already had his sedative(he was really out of it) and they are shaving the fur in his ear and cleaning the growth up. They then moved him to the surgery room and cleaned the growth even more.
So he started giving the injections of Novocaine and Zack started shaking his head. That’s when they told me that he was not going to stop shaking his head because he didn’t want them near his ear. They said they had to give him some propofol and he would only be out for a few minutes. I agreed, I had to because one thing I knew was that we were going home without that growth! So he put him under and cauterized the growth right off. Took about 5 minutes.
There it is! Pretty cool huh?
And here is Zack all sutured up and growthless! Wahoo! He woke up great and I sat with him until he was less woozy. Took a while for the sedative to wear off and he was having trouble walking. After a few hours he was up and around again. He’s a champ. So here’s my man today, 5 days later.
He’s back to himself and seems so much happier without that thing in his ear. Such a handsome man!
The Mace Place 