Hi Everyone,
I haven’t been on in a long time. Seems life keeps throwing me more things to deal with and I spend all my time online researching cures or help for the latest thing going on. Sorry, I’m whiny today.
Anyway, I have 2 bonded rabbits, the female, Nelli, just turned 7, and the male, BunBun, is presumed to be about 7- not positive since we found him in 2008. Bun has had his share of health problems, recently a loss of balance that seemed to be caused by an ear infection. About a month ago, I thought I saw him favoring his left front leg, so I took him to the vet, but we found nothing. Last Friday, I took him back to the vet because he is no longer putting any weight on the leg. He hops around holding it under him, but he does remarkably well. So the vet found a small subcutaneous lump
In the front of his shoulder/chest. She tried to do a fine needle biopsy but got no cancer cells or signs of abscess. They did think it was an abscess though, so we scheduled removal for today.
Well, he’s awake and doing OK, but the mass isn’t an abscess. They got some pieces of it and sent it to pathology, but we’re unable to remove it because it has blood vessels and it extends too closely into his chest where nerves and the carotid artery are. They said it is a soft, spongy mass of tissue. They tried to squash it down and get some cells from it, since fatty tumors often release cells when pressed, but no cells came off. The vet said it could be a sarcoma, but a benign fatty tumor is still possible. He said it could cause the limping if it’s pressing on a nerve, which is one of the reasons he didn’t want to try to cut the tumor out.
I’m preparing for it to be sarcoma. From what I know about human tumors, having a blood supply (being vascular) is not good. The fact that it is well encapsulated is OK, but extending into the chest, very bad. Also, last night, I was watching him breath, and it seemed like he was breathing harder than normal. If the sarcoma has spread to his lungs, that would make sense. I know I shouldn’t get carried away, but I’m so sad. He’s my baby. I don’t want him to suffer, or have to endure more appointments and surgeries if he isn’t going to get better.
If anyone has any experience with any of this, please let me know. I’m going to get the pathology results next week. Meanwhile, hopefully he will return to eating, drinking, chasing Nell I and begging for food like he was today. That gives me some hope, if he was in pain, would he be doing all that or would he gave stopped eating and grown depressed?
If it’s sarcoma, I doubt they should operate unless there is very little chance of recurrence. Thanks for any help.