Looking for advice

[wxorkt]

Hello everyone!

My 10 year old male brit has developed a slight limp on his left rear leg gradually over the past year or so. He had developed a slight hump near his left hip during that time. I brought it up to my regular vet last June and they suggested it was a fatty lipoma and did x-rays. Everything looked normal. I noticed that things weren't improving, and decided to take him for a second opinion to another vet. Did x rays on hips, back, and knee, and they suggested that it could either be neuropathy or an acl tear in his knee and referred us to a specialist.

Took him to the orthopedic specialist today who did more x-rays and an MRI. They noted that he has some spastic components of his walk, some muscular atrophy on his left leg, and some pain in his spine. They called with the results of the MRI, the doctor said they have not ever seen a case like this, but they are mostly sure that the fatty lipoma is pressing on his nerves in the spine and causing the issues we are seeing. They said they could do surgery, but that the lipoma would probably grow back and did not seem confident that surgery would resolve the issue. They mentioned it could be cancer, but the lipoma is so large that only part of it might be cancerous so getting a good sample for biopsy would be an issue. We would probably be looking at another $2K for the surgery.

At this point, I have spent about $2K just on diagnosis and have decided to watch to see if it continues to get worse. We are going to give him some meds for the pain and just take it a day at a time.

I am just concerned that this issue may become a major problem that will result us in having to make some really hard decisions several years sooner than we had hoped.

Any advice you can offer or support you can give would be greatly appreciated.

[kat]

Oh man, I'm sorry. You've gotten some tough news there. It really doesn't sound like they think surgery is a great idea so I would definitely do just what you're doing now - try some pain meds and see how he does. We did do surgery on our 9-10 yro boy a few months ago, everyone was quite optimistic about his outcome. First he had trouble recovering and was in ICU for a few days after, and then the pathology came back as a cancer that's hard to treat and quite awful. We will certainly think long and hard before doing surgery on any dog of ours again. I hope the pain meds help and he does well for a long time that way. Give him a big hug from a Colorado ABR volunteer and keep us posted on how he's doing. And maybe someone else here will have some better advice!

[Cindy]

I wish I had some advice but am sorry I don't know. I agree about the "wait and see" approach as it seems to be your only option at the moment. Our dogs have certainly had their share of lipomas over the years but I've never come across this situation. What are you giving for the pain? Just curious.

[wxorkt]

They have him on 100mg of Novox at the moment but he hasn't been on it long enough to see if it is making a difference.

[Cindy]

When Kayla was on Novox it was fairly expensive through my vet and I wound up ordering it through Valley Vet Supply (https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=572ca154-6a7c-4f33-ad31-b582564a8773 for almost half the cost. Even though I have insurance on the dogs, it does help to stretch the allotted dollars. You do have to submit a hand written prescription from your vet so it takes a couple of weeks to set up the account and get the drug.