| The very first Rottie I lost had abdominal cancer which went undiagnosed until exploratory surgery showed how far it had spread (and we didn't wake her up from the anaesthetic) :-(
I've been torn over the years after losing several dogs on whether to try everything non-invasive first before exploratory surgery (especially for weakened dogs) but I'm slowly coming around to my vet's old-school opinion which is you never really know what you're dealing with until you see what's going on inside with your eyes.
I just lost Orca this past weekend so I can't bear to write too much about him, but in Feb I spent over $1k on non-invasive diagnostics...none of which properly diagnosed an intestinal blockage. And one ultrasound diagnosis told me cancer and the tech told me he likely wouldn't last very long. This was at a weekend emergency clinic, so after fretting all Sunday, I took him back to my regular vet and we opened him up and found the blockage right away and breathed a sigh of relief.
So the moral of my experience at least is that fancy diagnostics can only do so much. Ultimately, a biopsy, visual observation of whether anything has spread to lymph nodes and surrounding tissue, and perhaps attempted removal of the mass can only really be done with exploratory surgery. Ultrasound can spot and measure lymph nodes, but then you're losing another set of hours or days and surgery would likely still be required to see if it was operable. So there's the time passage issue too while doing non-invasive.
I guess one other piece of advice is to say your goodbyes before exploratory surgery, because depending what you might find, it may be better to not wake her up :-( I unfortunately was not able to do this with my first Rott and that really messed me up emotionally.
Best of luck.  |