Serious Situation - Betty

Things are not looking good for Betty. She has had a tumor growing on her neck since Spring. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, and after consulting with out vet we decided not to do surgery for a slew of reasons. First Betty is very old somewhere around 16 years old. Second, we didn't think she would survive surgery because this big tumor is one of 7 that would need to be removed, it would be too much for her body. Third, she didn't seem to be bothered by it or in any pain, never flinched or made a peep if we touched it or moved it around. But the damn thing just kept getting bigger until finally about a month ago the skin split on it. So we have been keeping it clean, disinfected and coated in Neosporin, all of which kept infection at bay until about a week ago. We knew things had gotten worse when she started smelling very very bad. So we stepped up our doctoring under the direction of our vet all with the idea in mind that we would be putting Betty to sleep when things because painful for her.

A couple days ago we were cleaning as usual and the damn tumor degloved, if you know what that means then you know how horrible, gory and messy it is. If you don't know what it means and you don't want to gross yourself out, do not look it up, just trust me when I say things went from bad to worse in an instant. We immediately had a problem with bleeding, it would not stop bleeding for anything and Betty would not stop scratching at it. We had to unfortunately put her in the garage while we regrouped and talked to our vet, which stressed her out, not a good thing.

Enter our fabulous friend and neighbor who is a fabulous nurse and fellow dog lover, Kim. She came down after a long three day stretch of shifts with a bag of nursing goodness late late at night. We bandaged Betty up, stopped the bleeding and hoped for the best night we could.

 Here is Betty's tumor bandaged up. It is as big as a tennis ball and just hangs off her neck. And yes that is blood in her fur, I waited to clean her up till she was a bit more calm.

 You can see how bad Betty's cataracts are, on top of this she is all most completely blind and littered with tumors. But she is still one happy dog, sweet girl.

It has now been all most 48 hours since we bandaged her up and dosed her with pain meds and antibiotics. She sleeps alot and has started to smell again. Not a good sign that stink. We have been prepping Alex for the fact that we will be putting her down soon, it is just such a hard decision when she is still so damn happy and spry! She has had only one episode of pain and stress, the first afternoon/night when the tumor degloved, so we are very hesitant to take her in to the vet to be put down.

Damn, this caring for pets thing is so hard when they are so old. I feel so helpless, and just try to make her as comfortable as possible. Which I know that I am able to do when she gives me little licks and nuzzles.

Sweet Betty girl.