The Kat House

It was on March 8th of last year when Cruella went in for surgery to remove this tumor from her abdomen. What followed was the toughest thing I’ve ever gone through.

Cruella seemed to be doing well, but a few days after her surgery, she suddenly got very sick. I rushed her to the vet, and she was diagnosed with post-operative peritonitis, which is often fatal. She had to undergo emergency surgery to flush out her abdomen and re-suture the colon and intestines. Her surgery started at 10:45 PM and lasted until 2:15 AM! It was the longest, most difficult wait of my life.

The next day, she was transferred to the University of Tennessee Veterinary Hospital, where the doctors told me that she had a 66% chance of surviving the peritonitis. I was asked whether she should be resuscitated if she were to stop breathing. I said yes, and that as long as there was something - anything - that could be done to save her, I wanted them to do it. She spent the next week in ICU.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, while she was battling the peritonitis, we got the pathology reports back on the tumor - cancer. When the tumor was removed, the doctors had also removed four small lumps from under her skin. Two of those were also cancer. The doctors told me that they would address the cancer once she had fully recovered from the peritonitis, which would probably be weeks.

Once Cruella go to go home, she still wasn’t out of the woods. It was a very long recovery process. And once she was well enough, she had to go back to the hospital for oncology visits. It was after her first oncology visit that she attacked me and sent me to the ER.

Since that time, Cruella has gone for oncology checkups every couple of months. Fortunately, no internal cancer has come back. She did have one mast cell tumor that came up on the back of her head in November and had to be removed. Otherwise, she has been healthy and happy.

I took Cruella back in recently, and she got another great report. There was no recurrence of cancer. The doctors told me that she can now begin having oncology visits every six months instead of every 2-3 months. I couldn’t be happier.

I’m sure I’ll always worry that the cancer will return, but I’m thankful for the extra year she was given - and that I was given. And I pray that I’ll be able to write another post like this next March.