Amputation.

I picked Sasha up from the vet two weeks ago today. She was in to have her right rear leg amputated because of a sarcoma. C and I thought that she had just injured her leg- I saw her jump on a chair and her foot missed, then she started limping for a day or two, then she was okay. Then the muscle below the thigh atrophied, a hardish mass appeared on her upper thigh, and she started limping again. I took her to the VCA here and they took a few x-rays, didn't find anything, and gave her steroids.
She seemed to be getting better, but not completely, so I had C's cousin's fiance look at it (he's a vet in another state- Dr. J), and he gave her another type of steroid shot and asked me to keep a close eye on it. I did, and the muscle did grow back, but she still never flexed her foot or moved it, so I brought it up to his practice (an hour and a half away) to have his surgeon look at it. The surgeon had an emergency surgery that day and didn't get to look at it until late in the day. He said that he thought it was a tumor that was causing the limping in the first place and recommended "exploratory surgery" to find out. Now, Sasha is 10 years old and I didn't want to put her through that until I was sure it wasn't just her muscle tensing up into a giant knot. I talked to Dr. J about it and he agreed that we could watch it for a while longer, since it didn't seem to be hurting her. Well, after a little while, I noticed that it was causing her discomfort, and then it seemed to be causing a lot of discomfort. The mass got bigger in the course of a few of weeks, too.
Unfortunately, I am a responsible employee (when I'm employed), and I couldn't just take off of work without getting an okay from my boss. Things were a bit crazy, thanks to an increase in business and two... lackadaisical... coworkers, so I never quite got the okay. Finally, one night, she tried to stand up and then flopped over, meowing. Sasha hardly ever meows, she didn't even start meowing at all until she was about 6. I knew something was wrong, so I contacted Dr. J and he consulted the other surgeon and they decided that a full amputation of the limb was the best thing to do. I scheduled the amputation and put my notice in at work (not getting time off to take care of Sasha was the last straw in a long line of crap I'd been dealing with for a very long time).
When he got her on the table, he said it had gotten a lot bigger than he thought (almost all in the week since I had scheduled the surgery), and he had to take it off at the joint instead of leaving a little of the femur. It looks good, as far as healing goes, I'm surprised about that. She was trying to jump on stuff when she got home from the vet. The only issue we've had is that last Thursday, we noticed fluid building up under her skin above the sutures. When we woke up on Friday, pus was pouring out of one of the little nicks around the amputation area (from the clippers when they were shaving her for surgery, I think), so I brought her to the VCA again. They drained it and rinsed it, then sent me home with more antibiotics, painkillers, and some disinfectant to use 3 times a day with a warm compress on the area. Saturday night, a loop of some of the inside suture poked out of the hole, and I think that's what caused all the fuss in the first place. The body doesn't like foreign objects and does everything it can to push them out. The loop went back in when I wiped it with the disinfectant, which I wish didn't happen. I hope it doesn't irritate the area again when Sasha is finished with her antibiotics... Oh! And I got to take Sasha's temperature, too! That was not fun, I was just teasing with the exclamation marks. A cat who isn't feeling good already does not like it when you add to that discomfort by shoving something in her butt. I will post pictures at some point of the whole process, in case your pet ever goes through it. I have to go and do Sasha's warm compress now.