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Any idea

Fall

I chose to put my dog to sleep last night during surgery. The doctor said his spleen
had a growth that may be cancer and needed to be removed because he was bleeding internally. During surgery they called me to tell me it was not his spleen it was his liver and had cancer and said he was bleeding into the stomach. My question is he was 14 yrs. old and he was always happy, outgoing, loved to eat had lots of energy however 3 days before he died he started to not eat and go down, If he had so much cancer why did he never show it, I honestly thought he would of lived a long time.

• Veteran Advisor Angela Spar says:

  February 05th, 2008 at 11:50 AM

  I am sorry to hear about your dog. This is unfortunately not an uncommon situation. Often the first thing we notice is a patient that has collapsed at home suddenly and is very pale or occaisionally we fins a mass on palpation of the abdomen during a physical exam. Most patients will also mask their symptoms very well, it is only when they become so anemic that we see clinical signs from that, or if there is an acute bleed we get a clue from a sudden collapse. There may be subtle early signs such as weight loss, increase in panting slight change in appetite or energy levels from time to time but all of these signs are so vague and not attributable to just this problem but they may give us a clue something isn't right. I usually suggest to owners that we check a yearly blood profile as part of their exam, and you can sometimes get clues from that if you are lucky but not always. A lot of tumors grow very quickly too, so between one years exam and the next a lot can happen ( I have seen them grow in the span of a few weeks!)

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