schedule a surgery! oh, wait.

This week has been nothing short of a rollercoaster. I have spent hours on the phone with various vets, vet hospitals, and friends. On Wednesday, I was just so frustrated that I hadn't heard from UC Davis yet  that I called them and said, what's going on? They told me they had no record of any blood from Lucy or from the vet who pulled the blood and said if they found it they'd call me. I thought, ok, what is going on????? We sent the blood by FedEx, not donkey, so there should be some kind of proof that it actually GOT there. Anyway, I called the vet and politely said, please figure this out, and she dealt with UC Davis. It turns out they ran the test LAST WEEK and then lost the results so they were never reported to myself or the vet. Very, very frustrating.

The test showed elevated levels of progesterone and testosterone, and the interpretation said specifically "these levels are indicative of a mare that is either pregnant or that has a granulosa cell tumour". I was like, HALLELUJA...we have a diagnosis.

Also on Wednesday, my normal vet (we'll call them vet #2) came out and did spring shots. She came out before I heard back about the test results, so I was still super stressed. She asked me how things were going and I promptly burst into tears and told her the whole saga. She had a vet student with her and offered to palp Lucy for free as a second opinion for me and an educational opportunity for the vet student. Of course I gratefully accepted her offer. She found the right ovary and it felt pretty normal, she said, but just to be safe she fired up the ultrasound machine and ultrasounded her for me (I love my vet...she is awesome). The right ovary appeared abnormal and seemed to have a thick covering on it of some type. She said, "when you get the blood test results forward them to me and in the mean time I will consult with the other vets at the practice and see what they think" because the ultrasound didn't look like a classic granulosa cell tumour, but it did look abnormal.

Then I got the blood test results back, so I had abnormal blood results and abnormal ultrasound. Vet #1 said to schedule a surgery so I spent the rest of the day looking into vet hospitals.

Later that evening, vet #1 called back and said she had spoken to an endocrinologist at UC Davis and he had expressed a lot of doubt that Lucy's blood hormone levels were high enough to say "yes this is absolutely a tumour". She said she'd hold off on the surgery and repeat the test in another three months to see if the levels have changed. I was so disappointed...my diagnosis was slipping away and there was no hope for my de-witching Lucy.

Then the next morning, without talking to Vet #1, Vet #2 called me and basically expressed the exact same doubts after having a roundtable discussion with the other vets in the practice. They reviewed the blood test results that I had forwarded her, and also looked at the ultrasounds, and they thought the ultrasound looked like a very large corpus luteum on that right ovary.

So the next step is to give Lucy a shot sometime next week to bring her into heat, and then Vet #2 will come out and re-scan her with the ultrasound to see if she's ovulating on that right ovary as she should be. If she is not, then we know something is funky and we will go ahead with the surgery. If she is ovulating then everything is working as it should be and we will treat the lyme disease. I've already ordered the doxy from a compounding pharmacy (molasses flavoured...you're welcome, princess) and I hope that will help some of the body soreness/lameness issues. If not, then we still have THAT to figure out too!

AHHHHH!