can't stop thinking about it. the end of mr. the end of organized life. the chaos ensuing.

my cousin shari the veterinarian says pancreatic cancer is rare:
I can't say I've ever seen a tumor on a pancreas in a dog... the big dogs seem to always get their tumors on the spleen, and of those 50% are benign. Dogs do get pancreatitis (inflamed pancreas) very easily and I've never had one die although it does happen. If the pancreas problem is just pancreatitis and he's eating and not vomiting then he should recover from that. I'm just not sure about the tumor; if the mass is on the pancreas I am guessing it's not good but only because I know it's not good in humans. I've never heard of one on a dog. Maybe they just happened to find the mass while they were ultrasounding the pancreas and it was incidental, like on the liver or spleen. Hopefully it will be a benign and no big deal. Let me know what happens xo

that's encouraging. i don't understand what they were doing really. he told me they found a mass on the pancreas and seemed to think it spelled death. my friend kat who's a vet said she was annoyed that they cut him open to discover pancreatic cancer, i assume because it should have been visible on x-ray or ultrasound. i hate to think of them mishandling him or misreading the situation, actually hurting him and perhaps hastening his demise. it breaks my heart. i guess all i can do in my ignorance and lack of agency is take care of him as well as i can while i have him, though i don't know how he's going to fare back home with the stairs and with barb's inability to stop him eating garbage.

what really burns me is that they didn't recognize the clip from the last surgery and thought it was an obstruction. b. thought he'd eaten a ball of tinfoil and told them so that was part of their proceeding (though afterwards thought maybe he hadn't eaten it after all, and anyway that was a week prior to the trouble), but why didn't they have the records from the emergency vet that did the last surgery? it's all hindsight i know. but i don't have much confidence in this vet.

i thought he would die the last time 4 years ago, so he's amazingly resilient, and i just have to say hey, he's here! it's a miracle!