I joined today for the first time and have two questions to ask that I will post separately. I have an 11 year old female English Springer Spaniel named Pepper, who I adopted 2+ years ago from a shelter. She is in my avatar. Unlike most shelter pets she was an owner surrender due to the fact he was going into a nursing home. When she arrived we found that she had lumps in several locations on her body that had been diagnosed as Lipomas. My vet agreed with this diagnosis and told me that they shouldn't cause a problem and they were common in some dogs.
One of the lipomas is behind her right shoulder and has grown very large. She has been examined by my vet on several occasions and each time we have discussed surgery. This particular lipoma has now grown to the size of a soccer ball and still appears to have no malignancy involved. My vet has had a lot of experience removing Lipomas but she is very reluctant to operate on Pepper because of the potential for bleeding post-op. She is afraid that with the size of this one, Pepper will bleed to death during surgery. The largest one that my vet has removed is about the size of a softball and she says she has never seen one that is as big as the one Pepper has.
Does anyone have any experience with a giant lipoma, what course of action was taken, how did your pet do after surgery. I did find one post here in the forum about a Giant Lipoma and the surgery, and if you refer to the pictures in that post, Pepper's is very similar. (I can't post URL's yet).
At the moment my vet is saying no to surgery but she is really on the fence about it. She has now decided that I need to bring Pepper in every 4 weeks to check it and knowing my vet the way I do after 17 years of caring for my pets, I think she will decide to operate (with my permission of course) after seeing Pepper a few more times. I don't want to lose Pepper, but this "lump" is getting way out of control and will impede her movement before too long, I expect.
Thanks for any information!
