Spleen ... I Don't Need No Stinking Spleen

Now that the dust has settled, we figured we'd post the Sadie spleen story.  A couple months ago, Sadie had her teeth cleaned (tartar scraped).  Since general anesthesia is used, the vet likes to take the opportunity to do a full blood work-up.  Everything came back fine except for a slightly elevated liver enzyme.  A few weeks later, it was retested, and it was still a bit high.  The next step was a bile test, which again, came back slightly abnormal.  The step after that is an ultrasound, and we decided to go ahead with it.  The ultrasound was done at Angell Memorial in Boston.  Much to everyone's surprise, the ultrasound revealed a rather large mass on Sadie's spleen.  Not a good thing.  Worst case, it's cancerous and aggressive.  Best case, it's a benign mass that could erupt causing potentially fatal bleeding.  So, the standard protocol is to remove the spleen - apparently, it's a redundant organ.  We scheduled the splenectomy right away.  (Additional blood tests and x-rays came back favorable, not showing any spread of possible cancer.)

Sadie handled the operation wonderfully.  She is a tough little girl.  She had the procedure on a Tuesday, and we had her home Thursday night, albeit she was a bit foggy still.  The next few days we spent waiting for the results of the biopsy on the spleen mass, as well as the liver.  When the news came in, it was BENIGN!  What a relief!

Sadie is now bopping around like nothing ever happened.  She just got her 15 or so staples out the the other day.  And in case, you are wondering, Cosmo didn't bat an eye at the whole episode.

And if you are interested in the inspiration for the title of the News entry, think "Blazing Saddles".  The clip is below.

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