Update on Galoot

Yesterday, Galoot when back to the vet for a follow-up on the tumor in his mouth that was discovered when he was having his nose biopsied last month. 

First, it seems I was mis-remembering what the vet told me after that, and it was on his lower jaw, not his upper jaw.

When she looked at it yesterday, she saw that it had already regrown quite a bit, and according to the x-ray, it was beginning to invade his jawbone, so she removed the big molar that it was near plus the teeth on either side of that one, and a segment of his mandible underneath those teeth. 

When she said before that she might have to remove some of the bone, I had envisioned shaving off a bit at the top, but no, she removed the bone in that area. The whole thing. You can't tell anything looking at the outside, except that his mouth is swollen on that side, and you can see where the teeth are missing. The vet says that it will take him some time to get used to it feeling weird, but he should be pretty much back to normal in a couple of weeks. 

In the meantime, he's doing pretty well, all things considered, but moving a little slow, and pretty well-medicated. He's got a fentanyl transdermal patch until Monday, oral painkillers three times a day and two different antibiotics (twice a day and once a day).

She said that given how much she took, she's very optimistic about having gotten all of the tumor, and this is not a kind of tumor that metastasizes, so assuming we hear back from the path report that the margins from this surgery are clear, then he'll be cancer-free and good to go.    

After a false alarm about him being ready to come home yesterday, Peeper was very, very glad to see him today and get him back home where he belongs. 

This is the best I could do trying to get a photo of his face. The surgery was on the right side, but you really can't seen anything here. Not that there's much to see. You can, however, see the lesions on his nose.