Kim

After a long week of uncertainty for Kim's owners and at our recommendation, Kim had surgery and a mass weighing 240 grams (which was about 3.5% of her body weight at that time) was removed from her abdomen. The masses location, its size and the way it had spread forced us to remove Kim's left kidney with it. The mass was sent to the lab for a histopathological evaluation (biopsy).

Kim looked more energetic and had a better appetite already on the next day following surgery. A few days after surgery we repeated the blood work and saw an improvement, i.e. an increase, in protein levels but also an increase in kidney values (creatinine, urea and phosphate) compared to the values before surgery even though they were still in the normal range. Such an increase was expected considering that Kim's body had to readjust to the fact that it only had one kidney and indeed, 3 weeks later, when we repeated the blood work we saw an improvement and stabilization of the kidney values.

The biopsy results arrived a few days after surgery and confirmed the primary diagnosis that it was a cancerous mass. The mass was diagnosed as renal (kidney) carcinoma. This is a malignant tumor that usually has metastases in the lungs by the time it causes clinical signs and is diagnosed. Luckily for Kim, a chest x-ray that was done before her surgery did not reveal any metastases in her lungs. Unfortunately, this does not completely rule out the presence of metastases that are too small to be seen by x-rays but it is still a good sign. With masses like this, removing them at this stage does not solve the problem but buys the patient more time.

If Kim's mass had not been removed, it is very likely that she would not have survived more than a few more weeks but at the time of writing this post it has already been 2 months! In this time Kim's been improving every day and even gained weight to her normal weight. Kim's owners say that her appetite has improved significantly after surgery and that she was behaving like she did when she was 5 years old. Unlike people, Kim (just like Chupchuik) is lucky to be a dog and not be aware that she has cancer so her day to day life is not affected at all and she's very happy.