It’s been an extremely challenging period for us in terms of vet issues and the past several months continue to push us in ways we never imagined.  Many people have followed our rescue dog Penny on her recent health journey, but we wanted to more fully document what has happened with her medical case.  Like our situations with our baby rams Alex and Mulli in the spring/summer of 2024, Penny has given us a run for our money. Once again, like the boys, she has pushed the boundaries of vet science and has challenged her veterinarians and surgeons. 

We rescued Penny from a small Pennsylvania private rescue back in 2013 when Maddie came across her profile on Petfinder.  It was a seven-hour trip to get her, and she came home with us weighing just over a pound.  It was obvious from the start that she was wicked smart as she started her life journey with our family.  Penny was our fifth dog at the time and our smallest, but she held her own and took her place in the pack.  

Penny suffered two traumatic injuries over her lifetime, and both involved significant head and back trauma.  She was paralyzed for three months after her second incident, and we were told she’d never survive the night with each of these horrific events.  We still have vivid memories of holding vigil all night at home waiting for the dreaded call that thankfully never came.  To be told on two occasions that your dog was unlikely to survive the night is something you can’t fathom, and it is still hard thinking back to those horrific events.

Penny’s resilience and chihuahua spirit pulled her through and she defied significant odds and survived.  We worked with her continuously to gain back functionality using our own created PT exercises with the use of yoga mats and eventually, she was able to walk on her own with her quirky special hitched gait. 

Penny has the true tiny-but-mighty mentality and has always acted as the security officer to patrol the cats and other dogs.  Her barks and warnings are heard daily as she alerts us to the crazy antics of the cats and her sibling dogs.  Penny’s true love has always been at the farms where we kept our sheep, as she was often found romping through the pastures and enjoying the farm dog life.  Penny also loves all animals and, in the past, would lay with guinea pigs and herd the chickens in their pen.  

Over the years, Penny has been happy and strong and never had any health issues.  All her brushes with death were due to traumatic incidents and accidents.  This takes us to our present story.

A few years ago, we noticed a jiggly patch on her right hip and back and questioned our vet.  They said it was just fat as they checked it at an exam.  As the years passed, this lump got longer but always appeared as a jiggly fat patch.  Visit after visit we’d bring it up to the different vets we’d see and time after time, we’d be told it was nothing to worry about. 

Then in July of 2024, we took her in and demanded they do a full check including extensive labs with a fine needle biopsy.  The vet assured us once again it would be fine but to ease our worries, they agreed to it.   A few days later we got the call that her blood work looked phenomenal, and we would get the biopsy results back in another week.   Then, the following Friday at 8am, we got the call.  The vet was so nervous on the phone and apologized before she even gave us the results.  She said she was so shocked but that the biopsy came back as mast cell cancer.   So, for three years, we were watching cancer grow on Penny and that was a completely devasting thought.  Within 30 minutes we had scheduled an extensive staging and grading evaluation as well as a consultation with a surgical specialist.  To this point, we had never dealt with cancer or surgeons, so we were headed off into unknown territory.

The following week Penny spent the day at the vet office getting an abdominal sonagram to check all the organs, a chest x-ray and a lymph node needle biopsy.  The results came back about ten days later, and we were told it was all great news and there was no appearance that the cancer had spread. 

On Wednesday August 21, 2024, Penny went for her surgery consult to see Dr. Chris Gauthier at Chesapeake Veterinary Surgical Services.  At this consultation he did a complete exam of Penny, measured her body and sections of skin, and came up with several surgical options.  Before the appointment, we were told by our vet that surgeons are typically not great with “bedside manner’, but with Dr. Gauthier, it was the complete opposite.  He spent an hour sitting with us explaining all the options that he saw and genuinely answered all our questions.   He took his time, and we could tell right from the start that he cared about his patients and their owners.   We came out of that appointment with an order for a CT scan and a surgery date.  We were going to move forward with having this huge mass removed and Dr. Gauthier was going to use a skin flap rotation procedure to take skin from Penny’s belly/groin area and rotate it up to her back.   This seemed impossible to imagine honestly.   This area was so large and with mast cell cancer, and there would have to be extensive margins.   We point blank asked him if he truly believed he could do this case, and he confidently said he could.

Penny spent a day at the hospital the following week getting a CT scan with contrast to try to better identify the make up of the huge “blob” that spanned her back.  This would hopefully assist Dr. Gauthier in knowing how much of that area was truly cancer.  Penny had to be sedated but came home from the test that evening and recovered fine. Now we waited to hear the results of the scan.

A few days later Dr. Gauthier called with the frightening news that it appeared that the entire blobby mass was cancer, and it spanned the entire length and width of the mass under the skin.   He was hoping to find a few nodules of cancer in that mass but no, this entire thing was cancer.   This was a daunting thought, but he reassured us that surgery was our best option and that he was willing to do it.

On Tuesday September 3, Penny arrived early at the hospital for her big surgery. Her surgeon said he’d review all his notes and drawings and re-measure her body before entering the OR to be sure his plan was the best.  At 11:10 am I received a call from him telling me she was being prepped and that he was planning to do the same skin flap rotation procedure that we had discussed.  He said her lymph node in that area seemed to be a bit enlarged so he wanted to remove that during the surgery and send that out for biopsy.  He said it was not enlarged when he had examined her at the consult, and we were a bit concerned since the needle biopsy from the staging and grading had come back clean.   He stated that there was no risk in removing it and this was the way to know for sure it hadn’t spread.

Hours ticked by and we didn’t get a call from him until later that afternoon at around 2:30 p.m. Penny was in recovery with a drain, and he was able to get the entire area covered using the skin flap.  He was very pleased with how the surgery went and he said she should be set to go home the next day.  This was great news, and we were pleased to get through this surgery! 

Unfortunately, an hour later, he called again to tell us that there was a lot of bloody discharge coming out of Penny’s drain which seemed excessive.  They were closely monitoring her and running some quick tests to see if her blood was coagulating properly.  An hour later, he called back and said he believed she was having a significant complication with mast cell degranulation.  The cells were all on alert and her capillaries were bleeding out as a reaction caused by histamines.  They started treating her with several drugs to try to stop the reaction and it was quite dire. He stated on the call that he’d be leaving the hospital in an hour and would be closely monitoring her from home.  His team would continue to treat her and that if I didn’t hear from them, it was a good thing.  We once again held vigil through the night waiting for a possible call. How could Penny once again be in a life-threatening crisis?  How could we expect her to once again survive something so intense?  Minutes turned to hours as we held our breath and prepared ourselves for the worst.  We agreed that night that we had no regrets and if Penny didn’t survive the night, we knew we did the right thing by giving her the best chance at life.

No calls came that night and her relieved surgeon called the next morning to say that Penny survived the night and that the reaction was halted.  He said it was very atypical to see this, and it was a pretty grave situation that had occurred.  He said he was up all night watching all the vital readings and notes like a hawk and we later found out how truly worried he was about her.  Penny would be ready for discharge that afternoon at 3:30 so we began to mentally prepare ourselves for what we were going to see.

We anxiously waited in the hospital and were greeted by one of Penny’s vet technicians, Alex.  Ironic that his name was Alex (our hero lamb who survived incredible odds in May), and Alex was amazing.  He explained all the things to look for and how to measure fluids in the drain.  We were given an appointment for a week out for the drain to be removed.  He carried Penny out to us, and she was wearing a cute little dinosaur hoodie with the drain clipped to it.   She looked better than we expected and off we went for her home recovery journey.

The following day Maddie noticed that Penny’s drain was not collecting much fluid.  After a few calls and talking to her surgeon, he said if we didn’t notice any fluid buildup around the drain, that it was most likely ok.  Penny was acting better than expected so we decided all must be going ok.  The next day we noticed her leg filling with fluid, and it was starting to leak through some sutures, so her vet decided to have us start icing it and to bring her in early the next day which happened to be his day off and a Saturday.  He met us at the hospital, and they determined her drain was clogged.  They removed the drain, and he created a tight wrap around her to compress the area.  He basically made her compression shorts to keep the area from swelling up.  We were told to come back in a few days because unfortunately, a section of her skin flap was dying due to the massive bleeding and clotting issue that occurred that first night with the degranulation event.  Sadly, Penny would need another surgery.

Three days later, Penny returned to the hospital for her second surgery where her surgeon removed the dead necrotic portion of the skin flap and then left that entire area open under what is called a tie-on bandage.  This bandage is tied into looped sutures which are secured in her skin with multiple layers of gauze and special materials like zinc to promote skin growth.  Penny’s body would now need to grow new skin to cover the large open area.  This would take time and regular checks to get the bandage switched and monitored.

After a few days, Penny’s bandage started coming off as the sutures were pulling through.  The skin around the area was so fragile so this became our next issue.  Penny made several trips back and forth to the hospital to deal with bandage issues.   After a week of this, Dr. Gauthier thought the wound looked a bit like there could be an infection.  He started Penny on a second antibiotic and sent a culture out to the lab to test the bacteria.  

This was our second big setback with this surgery and one that was also scary.  As we awaited the culture results, Penny started to have small tremors and head issues. Of course, this was a Sunday night, so we emailed her surgeon videos of this.   Our first thought was OMG, the infection is spreading to her brain and nervous system!   After some furious research and googling, we found a vet article related to a possible side effect to the medication she was on and hoped it was that.  The next day Penny went in to see her doctor and he said the medication side effect was rare but possible.  We stopped that medication and thankfully her tremors ceased.  What a relief!  Meanwhile, the next challenge came.  Penny’s culture came back showing two different bacteria on two different spectrums that were quite serious.  Her surgeon had to think quickly and called around to every pharmacy in the area to find a place that could custom formulate an antibiotic for her.  It took 24 hours to find one, but we were grateful they were able to create this medication.  Now we just had to hope it would kick in and start to eradicate the infection. 

After a week on the two antibiotics, Penny’s wound tissue started to appear more normal and started to get stronger.  Unfortunately, as the wound seemed to be finally starting to heal, we got some devastating news.   The biopsy results had come in and although the tumor was a low grade subdermal, it had spread to the lymph node.  Despite being told her lymph node was cancer free in the staging/grading testing, it was not.   This type of cancer is not typical where a low-grade tumor spreads and the entire case was an odd presentation.  Penny’s surgeon had even consulted with one of the oncologists in the hospital to get his take since this was quite an anomaly.  Although this news was definitely bad, we were so grateful that Dr. Gauthier had a hunch and thought the lymph node felt enlarged that morning of surgery.  He had called to get our consent to remove it and then later told us it looked fine once he was in there and yet he took it anyway.  Wow, what an act of fate.  Had he not done this, we would have been missing a key piece of information in Penny’s health journey.  We’d cross this next bridge when we got there but for now, our primary worry was getting Penny’s surgical wound to heal.

Penny’s tie-on bandage had to be replaced many times and at one-point new sutures were put back in to hold it in place.  We made weekly visits to see her team and during all of this, Penny continued to eat and move around as if all was well.  She even did a full day trip to the beach to Assateague Island in October with her sibling dogs.  She walked near the waves on the sand with her bandage with her face in the breeze and it was just an amazing day.  One of the highlights of our year for sure.

During all these setbacks and high stress days, every visit to the hospital to visit Penny’s team brought joy.  Although we were dealing with some very serious and scary issues, Dr, Gauthier would smile and continually mention Penny’s incredible charm and personality. Even the first night after her surgery when she was bleeding and in a very dire situation, he later told us she acted as if nothing was going wrong.  Every appointment with him, he had a glint in his eye, and he just lit up talking about how she would be getting treatment while wagging her tail and being Penny.  It was such a gift to see such a highly trained experienced surgeon show such joy and compassion when treating his patient.  He was always warm and open and took as much time as needed to discuss the options and issues.  One Saturday he came out to the waiting room on his day off and sat next to us and just brainstormed different ideas on what to do.  He always was thoughtful and thorough and always included us and our ideas in every decision that was made.

We continued weekly trips to the hospital and on Wednesday November 6, 2024, Penny was released by Dr. Gauthier.  The big open wound area had grown enough skin, and her doctor was amazed at how well and how quickly this occurred in the face of so many setbacks. 

We chatted about all her ups and downs, and he shared just how worried he was about her through these months. He point blank told us that most dogs would not have survived a degranulation event like the one Penny had the night of her surgery and he again remarked about how she always turns her charm on for him and his team. He shook his head and smiled and said, “Penny has sure taught us all a lot.” It was emotional and bittersweet as he walked us out.  We both were just in awe of where we started, Penny’s fight and perseverance, and her resilience to not let this major surgery and disease take her down.  Although this was a happy day as her entire care team said their goodbyes, we were not at the end of this journey.  I said one last goodbye to the surgery’s incredible front-line girl Keanna and was then directed to the receptionists at the other end of the hospital lobby to set up Penny’s oncology consult.