Fuzzy Friday: Sad and worried about Opal

We are at the Wal-Mart in Naperville (map), across from one of my old haunts, the Fox Valley Mall.

As I wrote on Wednesday, we had hoped to be in Indiana by now, but things did not work out that way. We took Opal in for a routine teeth cleaning Wednesday, mostly because the vet was right across the street from Red Cross HQ, so it was convenient. Ideally, we would have taken her in earlier in the relief operation, so we would not have to spend an extra day there, but, as is often the case, we could not get away from HQ long enough to get her in and do all the paperwork.

When we called Tuesday night for an appointment, they asked us to bring her in at 8:45 (so much for sleeping in late on our first day after the relief operation). After looking at her blood work from the last vet visit, a couple months ago when she had some kind of cough, the doctor was concerned about her red blood cell count. The pre-op bood work they did for this visit was more disturbing -- even though the dog had made what appeared to be a full recovery from the coughing episode, the red count had dropped even further. With the dog being so anemic, they did not put her under, and instead took X-rays to look for possible tumors.

The X-rays came back inconclusive, and all her other blood work and urinalysis came back normal at the end of the day, so the doctor referred us to a specialty clinic a few miles away for ultrasound analysis. They made a case on our behalf that we needed to get in early, since we were not local, and the clinic was able to see Opal yesterday afternoon. So we spent another night at the Painters' Union. With the place empty in the morning, though, we were finally able to wash Odyssey for the first time in many months.

The ultrasound revealed some lesions on her spleen, as well as some anomalies in the liver. They were able to use the ultrasound to guide a needle in to the largest lesion for a biopsy, and we dropped the slides off yesterday afternoon. We should have results in another couple of days, but, in the meantime, we are very worried. The combination of anemia and lesions on the spleen is serious, even though the rest of the blood work is normal and the dog is, right now, asymptomatic (and probably wondering why we are doting on her).

After we finished with the vet we came here -- we had shopping to do nearby, and it was already too late to head over to the Naperville sewage treatment plant, where we need to dump. We'll be heading there in a few minutes. We did take advantage of our digs here to walk over to Olive Garden last night for some comfort food after a difficult day.