Our boy did great today!

Tucker made it through surgery just fine. Dr. Halliday said that the surgery turned out to be much more complicated than he had originally anticipated, and it also took about an hour longer than he expected it to. Apparently, every time Tucker had an "episode" (a total of 4 times), as well as any number of times that he didn't have an "episode", his splenic tumor would bleed and his body would respond by creating a fibrous protective "shell" around the spleen (complete with its own set of fragile blood vessels) to contain the blood in that area. Pretty interesting. So, Dr. Halliday said that it was very tedious having to cut through all of that "shell" and blood vessels. But, when I talked to Dr. Halliday tonight, he said that Tucker was recovering well and was sitting there giving him the evil eye because he had to put the dreaded plastic "cone" on Tucker's head (he kept trying to chew out his urinary catheter ... yikes!!!). We will be able to pick him up tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon and bring him home.

Unfortunately, Dr. Halliday didn't like what he found when he got to Tucker's spleen. He saw the main fist-sized mass, but also saw several other smaller masses in the spleen. He also saw some nodules in the liver, which really concerns me. I have a sinking feeling that the pathology report is going to show cancer (specifically, hemangiosarcoma, the really bad cancer), but Dr. Halliday wouldn't speculate before seeing the reports. We should hear back on that in about a week. So, for the time being, we are going to love on our sweet boy and keep him comfortable, so he can heal. Thanks for reading our blog and caring about us. I will post an update and pictures sometime tomorrow night.