10 days ago Sheriff suddenly got very ill and he had to undergo a urgent splenectomy, were his entire spleen was removed. The vets found a tumor with the size of a tennis ball in his spleen, which had ruptured and bled into his abdomen. Even though he lost a lot of blood during the bleed and the surgery, he quickly recovered. The tumor was looked at by my kind co-worker pathologist Arkadi, and luckily it was “just” a hematoma, which is a benign accumulation of pooled blood. We also did a complete blood test panel, which came back as perfectly normal. Not even one parameter was abnormal, showing us that he probably is in good health otherwise. The irony is that we had a routine senior checkup on him the day before, and he was found perfectly healthy. 18 hours later he was lying on the operating table and we were crossing our fingers that he would survive. Luckily we have the best vet which did a great job with him, as always. The reason for the hematoma on the spleen is unknown, but the pathologist said it could be some kind of trauma. I don’t know what kind of trauma that could be, but the only thing I remember is that the clumsy, crazy old man got a fractured rib earlier this summer when running hard into the sharp corner of a bench. We will probably never know, and we are crossing our fingers that he doesn’t get any complications. We would very much like to have him with us for several more years. Luckily he is in a very good condition for his age, and that is probably also why the recovery went so well. 

We have had our challenges by keeping this active 9,5 year old on his 4 legs, not jumping around as he use to, and now I am happy to say that he is doing great and seems to be as healthy as can be, everything taken into consideration. He is back stealing food and being his mischief self, and somehow he is even more hungry. I did not think that it was possible 😉

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