Hi All!! This may be a little long.. so sorry about that!

My name is Virginia. I have a 5 1/2 year old black lab girlie, Bella. Back in December, my daughter stepped on one of Bellas back feet on accident. She limped for a few days and was fine. Not long after, I noticed some swelling on her foot, the 2nd toe in specifically. I didn't really think too much of it and just watched it. It then began to behave like an abscess, so I started treating it, trying to figure out why it happened. The abscess drained, and she seemed like she was feeling better, so I chalked it up so something I missed. And then it started to look like proud flesh. I dealt with this for a couple weeks and finally was able to get in to the vet, but not our normal vet, as she was on maternity leave.

So January 29th, we had that toe removed. This was the first time cancer was mentioned, and the vet said she would look at some of the toe under the microscope and see if anything looked abnormal. It did not, so she felt like it was actually not cancerous, that the bone was broken and it was proud flesh. So we brought Bella home and all was well.

The amputation site healed well, Bella was using her foot and we didn't dwell on anything anymore. I don't remember exactly how long after the sutures were removed, I want to say it was couple months, (2 or 3) and I noticed a red bump on the incision site. And like before, it increased in size fairly rapidly, abscessed and again, started to look like proud flesh. So I began researching cancer, trying to find something to match what she was dealing with. She stopped using the foot, I was keeping it clean and bandaged. And researching! I found this site, along with so many others, and realized what was going on. I felt defeated, and annoyed that I did not know better back in January and just trusted the vets call.

I contacted our regular vet and got her back in. I already knew what I was facing treatment wise, and was coming to terms with it. The vet did a fine needle aspiration of the lymph node in that leg, as it was swollen. Got her on antibiotics and pain pills, and we set the appointment for the leg amputation the end of the week. The lymph node came back clear of cancer cells, and almost 2 weeks ago, she had the leg amputated. Our vet was rather annoyed the previous vet did not insist on sending off a sample, said that anytime she has a weird toe like that, she has lab work done because odds are good its cancerous. She initially thought it was melanoma, and she sent the entire leg in to be looked over. She wanted to find out what it was exactly and wanted to see if it had spread anywhere near where she removed the leg. She called me today with the labs results, and the verdict is squamous cell carcinoma. They did not find any in the lymph nodes or where the leg was removed. She did explain that this is usually a malignant type of cancer, but feels good about Bellas life. She said if anything seems off to let her know and we'll do more testing.

I am half paranoid that this is going to just come back. I understand that its hard to get all of the tumor the first time around, and that first toe amputation the vet said she took as much as she could, just in case. Its scary to have had it come back so quickly, and I plan on doing more research on that. I guess I mainly joined and posted here to see if anyone else has dealt with this type of thing, a tumor coming back shortly after an amputation, and moral support. Bella is her happy self again, she gets her staples removed on friday. She's adjusted really well to the loss of the leg, gets around fine. She has some weight to lose, so we are working on that.