Buttercup's Surgery

We all have cancer in our bodies at all times. Our body is always fighting cancer, no matter how healthy you are, every so often the cancer cells decided to get together and have a party and grow into something. Our sweet Buttercup apparently was having a cancer cell party on her foot!  About 5 months ago I noticed a growth on her foot, that first looked like a bump without fur, then it eventually started to bleed. 

Buttercup's Stiches

Years ago, I had a flat freckle on my arm that I had a weird feeling about and repeatedly had asked my doctor about and she kept sending me to the dermatologist but he kept telling me I "Was TOO YOUNG TO HAVE CANCER"!  Well.. on the 3rd year and my 3rd visit to him, at age 27, I finally decided that he needed to biopsy the thing on my arm.  He refused, and then a scene insued.. I picked up the little skin cancer panthlet in his waiting room and decided to walk around from person to person in the waiting room, with the picture of melanoma next to the funny freckle on my arm and asked each of them if they thought they looked similar.  Not so surprising to me, each and every person I asked thought it was an exact match, even the receptionist agreed. He very reluctantly took me in the back and hacked it off - and he did hack, and he didn't use pain killer.  He sent the biopsy off and 2 weeks later I got a call from his receptionist telling me that it came back malignant melanoma stage 3 and that was all she knew and  he wasn't available to talk and that was that. Nothing more!  I called my primary care physician and she came to my house, picked me up (talk about a great doctor!) and we drove over to the dermatologists office, and she demanded my records! (I believe she gave him a piece of her mind too but my mind was elsewhere - I had just found out I had cancer and nothing was registering). At the time, even though I knew better, cancer = death. I knew it wasn't true but I was working on retraining my mind - boy was that a project!    Long story short - I found another dermatologist that I loved, I had to have it resected to get clean margins and have had a few other surgeries since.  I'm still alive, so all is well, but that taught me something very important about going with my gut, and being my own advocate, getting 2nd and third opinions and you can never been too cautious.

Before Surgery

You all know about Max, and Daisy, and Buster and Fred, and now Ms. Buttercup.  So.. most of the vets I showed her foot to thought it was a wart.  I finally found a vet who was comfortable being proactive and did a needle aspirate (not always the most reliable - but if something positive comes back we know what we're dealing with) and it came back positive for a carcinoma.   We scheduled surgery for today. It's a minor surgery, the same kind I had for my skin cancer and I was lucky enough to be able to sit in and watch the surgery.

I'm sorry to say I don't think I have any photos of the carcinoma - I wasn't thinking enough to take a photo of it for the blog before it was cut off but I do have a few photos of before and after.

Pain meds kicking in pre-surgery

Butt after Surgery (and a pedicure)