If it's not one thing...

it's another.  So far, this year has been extremely stressful.  It seems like every time I turn around, something is wrong with one of my dogs and it has been really tough.  Last night, Phil was laying on Greg's chest and Greg noticed a red bump below his lower lip.

Of course, I immediately went online to see if I could find anything similiar.  Everything I read said to take the dog to the vet right away because there is a good chance it is a tumor.  Since our vet is also a 24-hour hospital, I called and scheduled an appointment for today.  Phil also has had a bump on his back and a black spot on his belly which I also wanted the vet to look at.  When we got to the vet this morning, the doctor came in to look at him and he told us that 90% of the time, if the bump is on the trunk/body of the dog, the bump is benign - but - if the bump is on the face or the paws, 90% of the time, the bump is malignant.  He did a biopsy of both bumps and then left us in the room for about 15 minutes.  I was so scared.  He finally came back in a got me and took me into the back to show me the cells from the biopsy under the microscope.  He said that the bump on his back is completely benign and nothing to worry about.  He had very technical terms for all of the different bumps, but I honestly don't remember what they were.  Then he had me look into the microscope as he explained the different cells that I was looking at from the lip biopsy.  He said that from what he could tell, the bump on Phil's face was the good kind of bump, not the malignant type and that it should go away in 4-5 months.  I was so relieved!  I honestly thought it was going to be cancerous based on the statistics that he had given me earlier, so I couldn't have been happier!  He did say, though, that if the bump continues to grow or if Phil scratches at it a lot and it bleeds, then we should have it surgically removed.  If we do need to remove it, they would send it off to the lab and there would still be a slim chance that they could find some cancer cells, but right now we are just hoping that it will go away on it's own.  The only bad news was that the black spot is pre-cancerous and we need to watch it carefully to see if it raises off the skin.  He said that there's a chance that he could go the rest of his life with the black spot, but it could develop further and we would need to get it taken care of right away.  Overall, though, it could have been so much worse!

Then, we got back home.  Bubby was home by himself and when we came in, he came to the door (we don't have him confined to the family room anymore) and he jumped in excitement, and then yelped.  I couldn't believe it.  I've seen it happen so many times that I knew immediately that he was hurt.  He tucks his tail between his legs, his head droops down and his whole demeanor changes.  I gave him one of his pain pills from after his surgery and it hasn't really done much.  He slept for a little while, but since he's been up, he has been much more wobbly and still not feeling very good.  He is back to being confined to the family room and I plan to keep him that way for quite some time.  I just can't win.

For Valentine's Day yesterday, we didn't do much - but Greg did make me a nice candlelit dinner with flowers and even made me some chocolate covered strawberries.  It was really nice.