Advice on Surgery
Hi, this is my first time posting on Reddit. Our 12 year old Lab, Champ, began showing signs of weak hind legs about a month ago, we took him to the Vet because he had ingested some carcass while on a walk and to all of our surprises, his bloodwork came back with Stage 2 Renal disease and Hyperclacemia. This completely shocked all of us even the Vet who saw him as a strong healthy male.
4 weeks later ($14k), he's final prognosis is hyperthyroidism and the Vets found 5 nodules in his hyperthyroid, 1 measured 1.5cm and the others 1-2ml. They're convinced that this is the reason for his high calcium which is affecting his kidneys and muscle weakness all over and recommend surgery to have those nodules removed, the estimate is $6k-9k.
We love our Champ dearly and are heart broken and have a mind that LIFE is more valuable than MONEY but this is costing us more than we can afford and we're needing to max out our credit cards.
What would you do? Michigan is testing his ICA (Calcium I suppose) and we should have results early next week and if the nodules are not cancerous, we want to do the surgery. If they're cancerous, we know we're NOT planning on doing the surgery, we'd hate to put our beloved Lab through the Chemotherapy effects.
If you are able to donate ANYTHING OR provide some feedback, that'd be greatly appreciated, some of our friends who've gone through similar issues, have stopped short of surgery and put their canine to sleep, we're believing that Champ has at least 3-4 more years with us and do not want to go that route unless there's cancer involved.
If you'd like to help us monetarily let me know and I'll give you my Zelle or Venmo account.
I've put some pictures on here.