Be forewarned - if you will be uncomfortable reading about canine health or surgery, you might want to skip this post.
In Norse mythology, Baldur was the most beloved god. He was called "Baldur the Beautiful." Everyone loved him (except Loki, but that's par for the course). Badur's mother, Frig, obtained a promise from everything in the world that they would never harm her son. Except mistletoe - being so small, she assumed it could never be a threat.
We chose the name Baldur for our boy because he is beautiful and golden, the perfect sun god. Jason and I have joked that it's a good thing that we had our second dog, Athena, in addition to Baldur because Baldur is so easy-going that he is not preparing us to raise children, but rather to raise Buddhist monks.
This last week has been tough for us and for our boy. Baldur has never been a big eater. He has never been super food-motivated and sometimes won't eat until bedtime. He had been eating less than normal off and on for the past few weeks. Sometimes he acted like his joints were bothering him - not wanting to go up the stairs or hop up on the couch or the bed. But he would act funny for a few days, and then be fine. And act funny again for a few days, and be fine. Monday night, though, he really wasn't acting like himself - he wouldn't even eat canned food, which always gets him going. He had had a checkup about a month before where everything seemed fine, except for the recommendation that we start him on joint supplements. But Monday night something was wrong - he seemed to be breathing heavily and his sides seemed a bit puffy.
Jason took him to the vet on Tuesday. Our vet felt his stomach and said it didn't feel right. He knows Baldur so well that he could tell that right from the get go that something was wrong. He wanted us to leave Baldur for some testing - X-rays and ultrasounds. Jason and I came back at 5:00 to pick up our boy and to hear what the vet had found. It wasn't good.
Our vet had found that Baldur had a mass on his spleen, and that his spleen was bleeding into his abdomen, causing the swelling. While he said the mass could be benign, there was also a good chance it was cancer. He recommended we take Baldur to a special 24/7 animal hospital that had everything from emergency surgery to oncology. He called it "the Mayo Clinic for pets." He called them to make sure they knew were coming the next morning. Jason and I were devastated. We took our boy home to prepare for the next day. I hadn't cried so hard in a very long time.
The next day, we arrived and they took him back for an assessment and ultrasound immediately. They had the x-rays and ultrasound from our vet, but they have a radiology and ultrasound department there that that's all they do - there might be something more they could find that would help them be more precise in the surgery.
While we waiting, we watched several calm, relaxed owners and their happy doggies come and go for their chemo treatments. While we were there, the Georgia Aquarium brought one of their otters in for an ultrasound. These gave us hope.
After his consultation and ultrasound, they recommended that we remove his spleen*. There was concern that if the mass on his spleen was cancerous, it might have spread, though we were also assured that if the left side of the liver was also affected that it too could be safely removed.
*Dogs (and humans) can live without a spleen. I don't know why we have them - they are apparently fragile blood sponges.
They brought Baldur to us so we could snuggle him and wish him luck before his surgery. He was already acting like he felt better (our vet had drained some fluid from him the day before). We were glad - it's better to go into surgery when you're strong. They would keep him for monitoring for a couple days - they said that with an organ removal, they would need to make sure his heart remained steady after such a big change. We wouldn't be able to visit 'til the next day, which was tough.
Our vet called to touch base and see how our boy was doing. All the vet techs at our practice know and love our boy, and we could tell Tuesday, even as upset as we were, that they were concerned about him, too. Everybody loves Baldur.
We got a call from the surgeon a couple hours later. The mass was confined to the spleen - no other organs were affected. For a moment we were ecstatic. But then the surgeon said that there were other small lesions throughout his abdomen. He said we wouldn't know for sure until the biopsy of the spleen came back, but that in his experience, he was 90% sure this would turn out to be cancer. Again, the rug had been yanked out from under us.
The surgeon said chemo would be an option. Our concern with that was his quality of life. He said that with dogs, the chemo is a proportionally smaller dose and they don't experience some of the horrible side effects that humans do - the hair loss, the constant nausea and sickness. Again, going on his assessment of 90% likelihood of cancer, he said that without treatment, we were likely looking at just a couple more months with our boy. With chemo, in his experience, we were looking at likely somewhere between 6 months and 2 years. After a short but very tearful discussion with Jason, where both of us could barely speak, we decided that, given the relatively good quality of life he could expect with treatment, that we would do everything we could for our boy.
The surgeon promised to call with updates, especially if something went wrong, and said that we could see him in the morning. When we called the next morning just to confirm that we were arriving at the beginning of visiting hours, we were told, "actually, he's doing very well. You can take him home this afternoon." Our strong, brave boy was recovering quickly, eating and drinking, and generally just kicking butt.
We brought him home, tired, bruised, and with a cone of shame, but glad to see us, and more enthusiastic about food than he had been in a month. Athena, who had been confused and antsy without her brother home, had to be held back so that she didn't go barreling into him when we brought him in.
Baldur will have a huge scar on his stomach - maybe about 5 inches long. When we brought him home, his whole stomach was purple - it's already faded to mostly pinkish-brown and looks almost more like a rash than bruising. His post-op notes said that they drained 1700 ml of blood that had bled from his spleen into his abdomen. Jason had to look up the conversion - that's seven cups. He weighed four pounds less after surgery. But he is still kicking butt.
He is enthusiastically eating his food and his meaty pill balls. He wants to get up on furniture and go upstairs (he can't do either without help yet and is annoyed with us for holding him back). He de-stuffed one of his toys yesterday. Our happy golden boy is back. We still aren't sure what happens from here. We get the biopsy results back some time this week, and will be able to plan from there.
In Norse mythology, Baldur was killed because Loki tricked Baldur's blind brother into throwing a dart made of mistletoe at him. Hel, the guardian of the realm of the dead, said that she would let Baldur return to the land of the living if every living thing loved and missed him. The gods went around asking all gods, giants, and creatures. They all said they loved and missed Baldur. But they found one giantess in a cave that said that she didn't care, so Baldur wasn't allowed to return. Of course, this giantess turned out to be Loki in disguise. For his part in Baldur's death, Loki was bound in a cave until Ragnarok.
We don't know for sure what will happen with our strong, brave boy. But we do know that he is a fighter. We know that everybody loves Baldur. He is Baldur Spleen-Slayer. We have an incredible veterinary oncologist with happy patients who we can go to. And Loki is bound in a cave until the end of the world. So we are being optimistic.