There I go. Bold and aggressive. Again.
I cannot tell you how many times clients have said to me that their dogs tumor was cut off and the surgeon “thinks he got it all“ because they had 2 cm margins. And because of this information, the pet owner thinks that their pet is “in the clear“ from cancer.
I think that’s how we surgeons and veterinarians justify what we do.
But the research is out there. It is known and documented that a tumor sends out microscopic babies all over the body. They are microscopic. So you can’t see them on an x-ray or anywhere else. The research exists that says that as long as the primary tumor, that big one- the reason that you went to the vet in the first place- as long as that primary tumor is present, all of those microscopic babies don’t grow. Cut out the mama tumor? The babies grow. So margins are stupid. They’re irrelevant. If you got good margins, that means you got all of the Mama tumor and all of those babies are now free to grow.
So the more the surgeon brags about having good margins, the more you need to be aggressive, and do everything else you can to inhibit growth of all of those microscopic babies after surgery.
Once surgery is done, if you haven’t already implemented cancer mitigation strategies, now is the time. It doesn’t even matter if you are doing chemotherapy for your pet. Even with chemotherapy, there are tons of strategies to reduce, inflammation in the body, and hopefully prevent all of those little babies from growing.
After all, the whole reason you got surgery done in the first place was you wanted to prolong life.
Diet and a plethora of herbal therapies can help slow down the progression of these baby tumors.
I just want to caution people not to rest simply because the surgeon got good margins. Glad the surgeon got the whole tumor. We certainly don’t wanna leave any of it behind. But now, if we haven’t already, we need to do every other thing possible to make sure all those little babies don’t grow.
Still seeing patients in Tampa, Clearwater, and virtually.