Update!!!!!!
Well, It has been a very loooooooong day. I am sitting here at the hospital in a run ( a large cage) with my baby girl next to me. I was a mess all morning, and of course we did Maddie's surgery last so the anticipation was killing me all day.
When we pulled her pancreas out there was an area about the size of a quarter or so on the right side that was abnormal. We couldn't see an actual tumor (which they said can be very hard to see) but that particular area was thickened, harder, and bumpier than the rest of the pancreas. We were able to remove that section without a lot of complications. We also took a piece of her liver for a biopsy also. The internist said she would have liked for the tumor (or area we had to remove) to have been smaller (about the size of a pencil eraser) but she did say at least it appeared to be a solitary nodule. Everything else in her abdomen appeared to be pretty normal looking for the most part. So, I am relieved that we were able to remove what the surgeon feels was the tumor. However, the internist did say/remind me that usually by the time a dog is diagnosed with insulinoma it is almost guaranteed that it has already spread. The pancreas and surrounding organs can already have micro-mets which are not visible but will continue to grow over time, this is why the prognosis is usually guarded to poor. So hopefully we were able to buy Maddie some more time with us. Right now I am checking her glucose levels every 2 hours and we are trying to stabilize that. Her temp is still pretty low and I have her on heat support to try to bring it up. She is not handling the morphine very well, it is making her anxious, causing her to pant, and really wigged out. Hopefully buy tomorrow morning/afternoon we can stop the morphine and give her oral pain meds instead. If she does not develop pancreatitis and we are able to regulate her glucose levels she might be able to go home on sat. if we are lucky and no problems arise (I sooooo hope she can.) Until then I will be spending the nights with her here at the hospital. Hopefully I will have the biopsy results within the next few days. For now we wait, see, and hope to get her glucose levels under control. We will be repeating some bloodwork in the morning to check a few other levels.
I will update again tomorrow (or today I should say since it is now after midnight).
Thanks again to everyone for their prayers and positive thoughts, please keep them coming!!
Carrie and Maddie
Anyway, please let us know how things went and how the little girl is doing. Take care.
