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A strange and weird lump

My dog was a young and healthy boy. One day I noticed this small strange lump on his leg. It was small and looked like maybe he had bumped himself of scraped himself.

I had been away for a few days and I wondered when it had shown up as I did not remember it there. I asked the sitter but he had not noticed. It was not that easy to see as it was on the inside of his leg.

It could have been there a day, or a few days, when I notice it. I was not concerned as dogs get scrapes and bumps and lumps. My Dalmatian had many under the skin lumps and none were anything to worry about.

But this was on the skin not under it. It was small, just really like a scab from a scrape. I decided that is what it was. I would just keep an eye on it. I thought in a day or so it would go way, as scrapes seem to heal up. Instead it got bigger, and bigger. No I am not meaning huge, but from the time I noticed it at about the size of an eraser at the end of a pencil it had grown to the size of a 50 cent piece, and in no time the size of a silver dollar.

I took him to the vet, as now I was very concerned. What on earth could this be? The vet told me that it looked in every way like a histiocytoma. A what, I said.

This is a common benign tumour. It comes from a cell that lives in the skin. Called the Langerhans cell. This cell is part of the immune system and its job is to process incoming antigens and present them to other immunologic cells. This tumour is not a threat in itself. The vet said that it would go away on its own in two week or two months. But the trouble is we could not know for sure.

She is a very honest vet and told me that from what she could see she felt strongly that is what it was, but also said that she could not confirm it without testing. So, what to do! The further testing involves biopsy of a small piece of tissue, or removal of it entirely. Since it was on his leg and easy to get at the removal option would make more sense. For that though, this was no small deal for my whippet and for me. This would require sedation and I try to avoid this unless there are no other choices.

Another way of testing but not as accurate is to take something from the lesion by way of a needle on the surface of the tumour, or by pressing a microspore slide against the tumour. It is limited but sometimes this can be all it takes to indentify a growth of any kind.

Her advice to me was to wait and see since if it were the histiocytoma, it would go away in its own. She felt that the risk of it being anything else was so small. I chose that option.

There was no change in a couple of weeks, she had suggested I come back, but since I had done further research and found that it could take 3 months to disappear I waited.

It started off like a little bump.

Then it looked like a raspberry growing on his leg, and a bigger and bigger one. It seems to be spreading out and thinning, but the wound or mark was bigger.

Then it looked like an erupting volcano on his leg. This was not going away, and I was now worried, but with further research I decided that this was how it would go away.

It was about 2 months in total before it had gone.

One day it was still there, and the next day, the ugly scabby part of it was gone. Yuk. Where was it? O, I won’t think about it. Hopefully it fell off outside. What mattered was that it had gone, and my dog was completely fine.

While he had it he was licking at it a lot as they say it is itchy. I had sprayed something on it that the vet prescribed, but it made no difference to him. Poor little guy, it must have been so itchy.

What else could it be?

Well, a malignant tumour for one. Another could be ringworm, as the ringworm fungus can sometimes produce raised round things called kerions, and these can look similar. As my dog was young, only 4, he was the typical patient for the histiocytoma. Well, typical really is under 2 years old. He was not one of the most common breeds that get it though, but he was close on the list, as the Greyhound was on it. Research shows that the most common breeds to get this are the Boxer, Labrador retriever, Staffordshire terrier, and Dachshund.

So, believe it or not, sometimes things really do just fall off and go away.

Sources of reference

www.veterinarypartner.com

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histiocytoma_(dog)

 http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_histiocytoma.html

 http://www.buzzle.com/articles/canine-histiocytoma.html

 http://www.histiocytosis.ucdavis.edu/histiocytoma.html

 

Submitted by Margaret Halsey


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