Allergy vs Cancer

I took my dog into the vet back in early September because she started having a chronic cough. The vet said she needed to do an annual exam as well. They said she had allergies and that she was fine. They said just give her some Zyrtec. Her cough worsened so I took her to the vet later that month and they gave her some cough medicine and said it’s just allergies. In both cases they did not test for allergies. Zyrtec nor the cough medicine worked for her and her cough never got better. I took her back to the vet early November for the cough and she was limping a bit. She also lost a lot of weight and was not eating. They prescribed her some antibiotics. She started having diarrhea but they said to just keep giving her the medication. We took her back to the vet a couple weeks later and saw another doctor and that doctor said to feed her Zyrtec. She just got worse and she had pain in the left hind leg area. She would cough all night long and some blood would come out as well. I took her to the vet early December and they did a chest X-ray where they saw some nodules in her lungs. They said it’s either a fungal infection or cancer and did some blood work saying it will tell them if it is a fungal infection or cancer. For her leg they said it was just because she lost weight and to just make her eat more. They prescribed the same antibiotics and said they will let me know when the bloodwork results came in. They called about a week later saying it wasn’t fungal related. They said they don’t know what it is and it could be bronchitis or cancer or something else and to continue her on antibiotics and they will do another X-ray when she finishes the medicine.  I asked about them saying they were going to do a blood test to see if it was fungal OR cancer and the next day they messaged back saying there isn’t a blood test to detect cancer and that I should go see a specialist. I decided to go to a different vet and immediately they referred my dog to a specialist where they did an X-ray of her chest and hind area and discovered that her lungs had an increased number of modules and a large mass in her left pelvis. They suspected the tumor spread to her left lung and sent a sample of the mass to a pathologist to confirm. I just want to know when I first took my dog in to the vet in September, could they have caught something was wrong with her from listening to her lungs? They just said that it was allergies with no testing done and said she was in good health because of the annual exam. If it was caught early on, would there have been any viable treatments?

Hello and I'm sorry to hear about your dog.  Obviously I wasn't in the consultations and nor have I seen the vets' notes (which would have been written at the time and cannot legally, or literally with many note-recording computer programmes, be changed).  In general, listening to the chest sounds gives a suggestion as to which level of the breathing system is affected (large airways, small airways, alveoli, outside the airways, trachea, left, right side etc) but not necessarily what is wrong, although we associate certain patterns with certain possibilities.  Radiography can have similar limitations - sometimes it is clear, but I have frequently seen scattered splodges within the lungs and been unsure whether I was looking at cancer or widespread fungal or bacterial infection.    It sounds as though the vet thought at first that the best fit for the sounds might have been an allergy - and decided to trial treat with a steroid.  However, this didn't work, so later they tried a radiograph and found the blobs - antifungals didnt seem to help and I, like your vet, would have been wondering about cancer and a specialist at this point.  It sounds as though the second vet you went to thought the same - and that the specialist found a second mass, sampled the tissues and will be getting histiological confirmation as to whether the lung masses are mets from the pancreatic mass, or not.  MTF

I hear that your mind is whirring at this point - that you are worried that the signs initially thought to be allergies, could have been the first sign of cancer and whether your vet at the time missed a chance to guess what was going on and test early?  Would it have changed the outcome?  Was it a reasonable decision?  I'm afraid that my answer is predictably boring - that the best person to comment will be your specialist, because very soon they are going to have all of the facts, as well as your vets' notes, in front of them.  Part of grief (which will quite rightly be triggered by such illness) is asking for these answers and wanting (while sometimes not wanting) to understand the choices that were made.  Hang on in there - perhaps list questions in advance - and please do let us know how you get on.