Steve Bourque wrote about Scooby, his 6 month old silver mitt with the cyst
in his mouth.
 
Steve, I think you and your vet should watch that cyst very carefully.  I
don't want to scare you, but we had a 3 year old male named Sam come into
the shelter on June 6.  He had a tumor in his mouth and his cheek was
swollen up--looked like he was chewing tobacco.  Anyways, the man who
dropped him off said it had been like that for a while and it didn't seem to
bother him.  I took him to the vet who had been treating him for it--he had
done a biopsy, diagnosed it as a cyst, and the results came back
non-malignant.  When this vet saw Sam on June 22, he said (in a matter of a
couple of months time) that the tumor had tripled in size!
 
By that time, the tumor had grown so that it was interfering with Sam's
eating.  His teeth would cut into it when he chewed and as a result, he
stopped eating altogether.  We were feeding him duck soup to get his weight
up and he was in so much pain he would wet himself.  So we contacted Dr.
Dutton and arranged for him to do surgery to remove as much of the tumor as
he could.  We were convinced he wouldn't even survive surgery!  The biopsy
was sent to Bruce Williams whose report said this particular tumor would be
aggressive, even though it wasn't cancerous.  He was right.  Sam's surgery
to remove the tumor was on June 23--the tumor has already regrown to that
size and is beginning to interfere with his eating again.  This time there
will be nothing we can do for him, as the tumor has attached itself to his
jaw and cheek.
 
So, please watch that cyst.  It may only appear to be a cyst now, and that's
what Sam's was originally diagnosed as, but from what I've heard from the
vets, oral tumors are very, very fast-growing and there is little that can
be done once it starts, unless it is radically removed in the very beginning.
 
Please keep us posted....
 
Stephanie
[Posted in FML issue 1646]