Surgeon Round Two

We took Penny to the surgeon today for a consultation. He didn't have any good news for us, but that's no surprise. His opinion? The tumor is nasty. It looks nasty, it feels nasty, and it probably is nasty. BUT he is not convinced that it has actually been a tumor for the last four years (interesting!) He thinks that it was probably a ganglion (?) or a hunk of scar tissue or something and only in the last few months has it really become a tumor. Cancer doesn't just sit around for four years hanging out and doing nothing.

Just like the last surgeon we talked with, this doc didn't want to go ahead with a radical surgery if there is no reason to do so, which I think is a really good thing. He suspects that this tumor is probably aggressive and that it may already be affecting her abdomen -- the tissue on her left belly (the side where the tumor is) feels harder than it should (both he and the internal medicine doctor agreed). He said that he could take out as much tissue as he could (which would be a LOT) but that it might not do any good if we don't know what sort of monster we are hunting in the first place.

SO, we are sort of regretting not getting a true biopsy earlier...i.e. when the other surgeon we went to four years ago recommended it. But we can still do one now. The doc we saw today recommended doing a wedge biopsy and an ultrasound to see what is happening in her abdomen, if anything. The biopsy would be relatively inexpensive (less than $500, I think?): they will have to knock her out to do it, but it would give us the most information (what sort of tumor it actually is, how aggressive it might be, whether it would be treatable with radiation or chemotherapy, etc.) The full-out surgery would cost between $2,500-$3,000...which is more than we have to spare, but it is pretty much the only option (short of leaving it be) if it is sarcoma. A sarcoma tumor is most likely a vaccine-related tumor, and that is pretty much the worst. If the thing isn't sarcoma (I think this is what he said), it may be manageable via radiation or chemotherapy (which cats tolerate much better than humans), the cost could be about the same, but hopefully nobody would be cutting anyone open.

This is such a hard thing to deal with. Penny is a beloved member of the family, but is also a cat. How far is far enough?