Thoughts on this lump on my dog’s cheek?

[alinas2010]

Has anyone seen something like this? It started as a flat irritated patch in January, thought it was from stitches rubbing her cheek after an extensive dental cleaning with extractions. Vet rechecked several times and agreed and removed stitches early. Then it turned into a swollen mass of tissue and I thought it was just irritated. Went back to the vet and they gave us some sort of antacid to put on it. That was at the beginning of March. It did slowly go down and get tiny and I quit worrying about it. But I saw her rubbing her cheek the other day and checked and now it’s the biggest it’s been. Not sure if it’s just from her rubbing it. Is this a tumor? Vet appointment on Friday but just curious in the meantime if anyone has had something similar. Has been eating/drinking and playing fine in the meantime. Only rubs her face once in a while.

This is when we initially noticed it in January like a week or so after surgery:

A few weeks later:

Late Feb/March:

Today:

 

[Ilovemychicks08]

My golden had something like that on her cheek the vets gave her some medicine for infection as hers was turning white. It went away after a two ish weeks on the meds.

But she didnt have surgery before it.

I hooe your pup is ok

 

[alinas2010]

My golden had something like that on her cheek the vets gave her some medicine for infection as hers was turning white. It went away after a two ish weeks on the meds.

But she didnt have surgery before it.

I hooe your pup is ok

Thank you, I appreciate you looking at it. So your dogs was an infection? I initially thought this could be, too, but now it just doesn’t seem like that’s the case.

 

[Ilovemychicks08]

Thank you, I appreciate you looking at it. So your dogs was an infection? I initially thought this could be, too, but now it just doesn’t seem like that’s the case.

Yeah it was a infection. We think she may have bit her lip or our other golden bit her lip and it swelled and got infected.

 

[alinas2010]

Well I hope it’s something simpler like that I’ll share what the vet says on Friday.

 

[AinaWGSD]

Could be an infection. What kind of dog? It could be a benign tumor or something worse, so it's good that you're having it checked. Have you tried benadryl? It may not do anything, but there are some kinds of tumors that will get smaller on antihistamines.

 

[alinas2010]

Could be an infection. What kind of dog? It could be a benign tumor or something worse, so it's good that you're having it checked. Have you tried benadryl? It may not do anything, but there are some kinds of tumors that will get smaller on antihistamines.

She is a dachshund. She’s absolutely my baby, so I’m really praying it’s nothing. But I’m trying to be practical about it and accept that it may be something malignant, unfortunately. She is starting to get up there a bit in age, she will be 10 years old next month.

Interesting, I didn’t know about Benadryl having an affect on tumors. She does take Benadryl sometimes for allergies, but I haven’t given her any since her mouth surgery. I may try that and see what happens. Thank you.

 

[alinas2010]

I realized I never updated this. I am always disappointed when people don’t update their posts, so here it is:

We went to the vet and the vet recommended removal and cytology. She didn’t think it was anything cancerous just from looking at it and leaned more towards a granular reaction, but wanted to be sure. So we scheduled a quick 5 min surgery 1 month out.

Well the week of the surgery came and I looked at her cheek and it had shrunk. I wondered if it was too small to remove now, so I sent a picture to the vet and asked if she thought she could remove it still. The recommendation was to watch it and see if it flared up again and if it did we would just go in and remove it right away. It seems to be some sort of tissue reaction. Maybe trauma based inflammation of some sort? It’s weird because it’s not static, it seems to change. Anyways this is what is shrank down to and it’s currently a tiny bit smaller than that:

So I’ll check it once in a while and sometimes it’s a little bigger, sometimes smaller. But it hasn’t been big enough to remove again yet. We’ll see what happens!