Tiegan and the Alien Owie

 
    Several weeks ago, I noticed what I thought was a sebaceous cyst on the side of Tiegan’s little jaw. Ivan had these and they went away without a great deal of apparent discomfort or inconvenience, so we thought this would do the same. No, it did not. In fact, it kept growing and became this ugly alien growth about the size of a pencil eraser. It showed no signs of leaving. Off we went to see our vet. She did a needle aspiration, during which my little girl was magnificently well-behaved. I held her, waved yummy treats in front of her nose, and murmured soothing reassurances. Tiegan received her treats and soon the vet came back to say the monster was benign. Hallelujah! However, the alien monster seemed to be getting bigger so we decided it should be removed while it was still small enough to easily vanquish. The vet said the surgery would be short because it was still such a small alien.
   The vet tech started her info for the surgery date with, “When you drop her off,” to which I replied there would be no dropping off; we would wait. The surgery took less than an hour and our vet came out to tell us Tiegan had done very well and would be ready to go in an hour or so, as soon as she had recovered from the anesthesia. A little over an hour later, I saw Tiegan being lead out of a door at the end of the hall and ran to meet her.

    The alien monster was gone. The stitches were all inside with a tiny bit of surgical glue on the outside. If you didn’t know where to look, you would never see this little line. It was almost like cosmetic surgery. Our vet said she wanted “the princess’s face” to be as unblemished as possible and also wanted to avoid giving Miles any visible stitches to pull on. We took her home to Miles who was very glad to see her and sniffed her all over several times. While we were gone, Miles had been a good boy; he had finished his peanut butter Kong and his Buster cube, massacred a few stuffed animals, and came downstairs from an apparent nap in the middle of the people bed when we brought Tiegan home.

I got little inflatable donuts for my tiny girl to wear if needed. I was able to work at home for a day or two, and then for several days took Tiegan to work with me in the afternoon so she only had to wear the donut in the morning when I was at aerobics. She was very good and did not scratch at her incision. Miles was also remarkably good and did not bother her incision. She healed beautifully. The alien monster has been vanquished.