Yesterday we had the surgical consult with Dr. Julie Duval, she recommended getting Gracie's mass out as soon as possible. We talked about doing a biopsy first, but due to the location of her mass it was not a good option for Gracie and she would have to be put under without knowing whether we actual could get a viable sample of the mass. So today Gracie is undergoing major surgery to remove the mass on one of her right side lung nodules.  The surgery entails putting Gracie on a ventilator (which is always a greater risk b/c sometimes dogs have a hard time coming off of it) and making a large incision between to ribs roughly 5-6 inches long. Dr. Duval would go in through the separated ribs to remove the impacted lung nodule and visually inspect the area for anything else that looked suspicious. We waited for the surgery to be done, I couldn't stand to leave. All in all it took about 3 1/2 hours before Dr. Duval came out to say Gracie made it through surgery okay and was in recovery. In fact she was already sitting up.  Unfortunately Dr. Duval noticed that there was an enlarged lymph node beside the mass so she took a sample to biopsy, but because of it's location couldn't remove it. The fear was that the suspected cancer had spread. Now we would have to wait for the biopsy results from pathology, but the plan was to be prepared to meet with oncology for follow up. It would be 10 days before Gracie could get her staples out and if she needed additional treatment that would be the soonest she could start it.Gracie on the way to surgery