I’m not dead… I feel happy 2


We took Ollie to the vet today and compared to what we were expecting we got good news! For those who don’t know the reference in the title, it’s from Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail. Here’s a link to see the scene it’s from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcbR1J_4ICg .

Ollie had two problems we took him to the vet for. An old problem, a growth on his butthole that’s been there about a year or so, and a new problem, a lump on his neck that started bleeding on Saturday afternoon.

The butt lump bleeds if he licks it, so we have to keep him in a cone at night and wearing diapers during the day. Doing that, it’s quite manageable.

The neck lump we were super worried about. It appeared in May, and grew a lot in the 4 days before it burst. We thought for sure that the vet would say it was the end for Ollie. He’s 12 years old, so it’s not unexpected, but we were all very sad.

However, the vet said that the neck lump is an abscess! He gave us 20 days of antibiotics to treat it, and it should heal up and go away. Yay!

The butt growth is cancerous. But it’s not ending his life immediately, which makes us very happy! He got some blood drawn to check his liver and kidney levels before he starts on an NSAID that has been shown to slow the growth of cancers like this. We checked on goodrx and can get this medication for only $14 a month! It’s like $80 a month at the vet.

The vet couldn’t give us an estimated time that Ollie has left. We just need to watch his eating, drinking, and comfort levels. That will tell us when Ollie is ready to go. But he said he wants to see Ollie again in 6 months, so at least he seems to think he has 6 months left!

Poodles normally live 12-14 years, and Ollie is 12, so another 6 months to a year would be great!

We are very very happy that we don’t have to put Ollie down next week like we thought we were going to have to do before we took him in.

Below is a picture of Ollie wearing one of his washable diapers. He is a silver Standard Poodle with kinda shaggy hair wearing a white diaper with blue turtles on it.


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