Our 7 year old female Jack Russell, Ruby has a lump on her stomach (golf ball size). Have taken to a vet and although they say it could be anything they are leaning towards breast cancer because of the location of the lump. The lump is soft like a blister but has a hard object inside. The vet has recommended removing the lump and sending off for lab tests to determine if it is cancerous. The cost would be £450.
Has anyone been through a similar experience and is £450 a reasonable price? I'll admit that the cost is probably beyond our finances and I'll be talking to my wife tonight about the way forward.
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Luckily she got better and we didn't need to bring her back, as the vet had quoted an extraordinary £500 for doing the X-Ray. Seemed a lot of money to me considering that only covers telling you what the problem is, not how to fix it.
Only suggestion I can give you is to not be too loyal to your existing vet. Phone a few others up - you might find one that's willing to remove the lump for half as much money.
Not a pet owner myself but could this lot help?
Our dog had cancer in her mouth and she ended up with half her jaw cut out and lots of treatment but eventually was cured and she led a pretty normal life even with 1/2 a jaw . Dogs do adapt pretty well
We ended up taking her to a specialist place in Hertfordshire , I will try and find out the dets for you if you like . Even though she was insured it was still a fairly pricey process .
Good luck with whatever you decide to do
with tests, vet bills and surgery bills he used his £4,000 pet insurance cover as well as £3,800 of his savings and now pays £300 per month for chemotherapy treatment.
i love pets but am fortunate enough to live in a flat so cant have any. that situation would really test me.
good luck.
As for prices it seems they work on the size of your dog, Bailey's x-rays totalled £750, £7,000 in MRI and CT scans over £1100 in tests only to be told "It's not that we'll try something else" and as some may know we travelled to Northampton to see a guy who specialises in German Shepherds to be told he has a bad neck!
I'll ask about (give me a couple of hours)
I've left a message for someone all knowing. anything comes back that maybe useful I'll let you know.
Good luck to the three of you.
One thing led to another, final cost £1700 & it still ended up being put down :-(
http://www.jack-russell-terrier.co.uk/forum/index.php
Sorry to hear about your situation pal. One of my Rottweilers recently passed away from stomach cancer. The first thing that should be done which has already been stated is to run some blood tests. Following this, the lump itself will have to be examined, possibly through surgical means.
In my situation, we let the cancer run its course and put the dog to sleep when her quality of life had eroded sufficiently to warrant this course of action. It is always tough as pets, especially dogs, are considered members of family. Personally I am not a huge fan of expensive surgeries, chemotherapy, etc. for dogs. The diagnoses are generally made too late, the costs to the owner are high (not necessarily a consideration for everyone) and dogs lead relatively short lives anyway. This is just my personal opinion and I appreciate that other people may hold different views on what is a sensitive matter.
I hope the outcome will prove to be nothing more than a benign cyst or something else. Keep us posted.
OA, I think your right about the surgery. To me its about the quality of life, before and after it happened. Unfortunately we have to play god and decide where to go with your dogs, be it surgery or let nature take its course or the ultimate decision PTS. Without going into to much detail because of legal action going on at the moment, I took one of my dogs somewhere!! with him dragging his feet so badly they were bleeding from the nails and they refused to treat him because we were waiting on results from the states. What they seem to forget is like us, they have a duty of care for our animals.
JaShea99,
Unfortunately, this what people tend to conveniently forget about when getting larger animals as pets. The normal one is the exercise, "sod it" its raining no exercise for the dog, too cold, too foggy. Give them 100 degrees in the shade they'll be up the park chucking a ball about and expecting the dog to chase it. Its the same with finances, give them a bashed up old motor and they will chuck a fortune at it keeping it running. As soon the novelty wears off with an animal or it becomes ill, "SOME" people think its ok to tie it to a lamp post or just let it run free. Its my responsibility for my dogs, not you or the local rescue, me!
Been there myself with a 14 yr old JR-X (got him as a 2 yr old from Foal Farm in Biggin Hill) and adored him. He had cancer of the lymph nodes.
Hopefully Ruby's just got benign cyst or fatty lump (as has been said, lots of dogs get them). By all means get a second vet opinion if you feel it worthwhile but I would go with a vet's advice at this stage - they've examined her.
If the worst-case happens, in our case we decided against an op and/or chemo because of our dog's age. The prognosis was a month at the most but we had a great vet (sadly now retired) who recommended we try an alternative treatment called CV247 (there's quite a lot about it on the web but basically it's a compound with some ingredients common to aspirin, though aspirin isn't a substitute). It wasn't cheap and as it's a holistic treatment, as recommended, we put him on an organic diet (he ate better than we did!) but the CV247 gave him over 6 months (from almost immediately) of near-normal quality of life for an old-timer. Literally until almost the very end you would never have known he had cancer. Despite the cost I'd do it all over again without hesitation if in the same circumstances - in fact I'd take it myself if I were ever struck down by the damn thing.
Anyway, hopefully you won't be faced with any such dilemma.
All the best.
6 months doesn't sound much and we didn't delude ourselves that the cancer would magically disappear (though it isn't unheard of for CV247 to cure it) or that the end wouldn't be heart-breaking (it was of course) but every week that went by with him enjoying life pretty much as normal was brilliant - a real bonus for him and us. It was a couple of years ago now and we "got back on the horse" within a few months with a couple of rescue X-breeds which are great but we still miss dear old Basil.
Anyway thoughts very much with Ruby. Fingers crossed for the best possible news.
Obviously no diagnosis at this stage can be 100% either way but I have spoken to another vet and feel we had a more detailed informative conversation.
The second vet is of the opinion the lump is likely to be a hormone imbalance. Ruby has never been spayed (for various reasons) and is showing signs of an oncoming season. The plan at the moment is to finish the course of medication prescribed for high temperature (which this vet thinks has gone) and then have her spayed. At the same time he will remove the lump (which is easy for him to remove) and we then have the option of sending off for analysis. Due to the first vet I'm just not comfortable leaving it as it is. We have a week to see how things go and we will monitor Ruby.