The Big Melanoma Scare

Jamie's horse had lumps. Several lumps under the skin on the neck and chest. She was a teenager and loved her horse, of course. The horse was a middle aged grey and most likely the lumps were melanomas. Melanomas can be benign, meaning that they won't spread to other locations or they can be malignant and spread. Malignant melanoma is a type of cancer. Grey horses frequently have melanomas and mostly they aren't malignant. Jamie needed to know which type her horse had.

The hard part for me was to get one off the horse to send to a laboratory for histopathology. The histopathology would tell us which type of melanoma it was.

I chose a golf ball sized lump on the horse's chest to remove. It was in a easy area to get at and there were no vital structures nearby. With the horse sedated and local anesthetic around the lump, I got ready to remove the mass. One fairly nervous teenager holding the horse. I made an incision over the mass and found nothing but muscle. It turned out that mass was buried under a fair amount of muscle. I had no choice but to keep going and remove the mass preferably in one piece. Twenty minutes later, with a good sized pool of blood under the horse (muscle can bleed quite alot), I got the melanoma out. I started closing up the muscle and skin in separate layers. The whole time we had been standing in the barn aisle hunched over this horse's chest people had been coming and going for lessons. The instructor happened to come by and I said 'look at this, we finally got it.' I reached down to pick up the shiny black mass off my sterile glove wrapper to show her and it was gone! I was stunned, I hadn't even finished closing the incision yet. I hadn't left the horse the whole time. Did I bump it with my foot? No. Not on the ground. Then I remembered seeing the instructor's dog wandering around. 'Where is that dog?' I yelled. No one seemed to understand why I was so anxious to find the dog. I had to explain (with expletives) that I thought the dog had stolen the mass I just spent a half hour removing from Jamie's horse and I had to have it back for the laboratory otherwise it was all a waste of time. I spotted the dog on the other side of the barnyard and charged up to it. It was still chewing on the melanoma. Fortunately melanomas are a bit gritty and tough and this dog wasn't too eager to eat it. I got the melanoma away from the dog and put it into a jar of formalin for safe keeping.

Back in the barn Jamie's horse was still dripping blood and she didn't seem too happy that I just ran off like that. Or maybe it was the language? I finished closing the incision without any more interruptions.

The pathologist's report came back that the melanoma was benign and Jamie didn't need to worry anymore. Funny, the laboratory never said anything about the teeth-marks in the mass.