Two-in-the-Belfry

My sweet little Lily is going under for a thoracotomy and lung lobectomy on Wednesday to remove a mass from her lung. There’s a 90% chance that’s it’s cancerous, but that means there’s a 10% chance that it’s not. My rationale is that 10% has to come from somewhere; maybe Lily’s that somewhere. Maybe I’m just too optimistic, but a little hope never hurt anyone.

If it is cancerous, depending on how malignant it is, this surgery will give her anywhere from another 2 years…to another 6 months (which is how long she’d have without surgery).

Please keep her in your thoughts. Lily’s only 7; she should have a long life still ahead of her. I lost my cat Eden in December to cancer; I'm not ready to lose Lily.

UPDATE 3/23

I've been meaning to update this journal for a few days now. I took Lily in to the veterinary specialist clinic on the 7th for her surgery.  Got a call a few hours later saying that the surgery went well and Lily was recovering in the back; the mass had been localized to that one area of the lung and showed no sign of spreading, and biopsy results would be back in about a week.  Lily had to stay there in recovery until Friday evening; she was happy to see me for about a minute when I picked her up before she remembered she was mad at me. And I don't blame her, look at my poor Lily!



The vet told me the cone would have to stay on until she got her staples removed on the 21st. Well, that wasn't going to work: Lily refused to eat or even really move with the cone on and was so unhappy. Luckily, I happen to love dressing up my dogs in fun outfits, and my dogs aren't much bigger than Lily, so...



T-shirt time! It kept her from fussing with her staples and made her look extra stylish! Everything was fine: Lily was healing nicely, getting used to her shirt (okay, not really) and acting more like herself every day.

On the 13th I got the call from the vet's office about the biopsy results. 

It wasn't cancer.

I couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe it. They said they had never removed a lung tumor that had come back non-malignant. It turned out that the mass was a cyst from chronic pneumonia: Lily has always been prone to upper respiratory infections and treated for those, but underneath that was a case of pneumonia that slipped under the radar. If they hadn't removed it, the cyst would have kept on growing until it ruptured and killed her.  She got her staples removed on Wednesday; she'll need chest x-rays every 3 months for the next year, but the vet said barring any additional problems she's effectively cured and should live another 10-12 years.

I'm so incredibly relieved and grateful. It's literally the best outcome of this whole situation and one that I know most pet owners in my situation don't get. I said before that 10% had to come from somewhere; I'm glad Lily gets to be apart of that. She's back to her old self now, just a little more bald (her fur is growing back slowly but surely). Who says black cats are bad luck? This might be the luckiest cat I know!