The state of the Lu
Some of you are aware that Lucy was scheduled a few weeks ago to have surgery to repair a torn (dog version of the) ACL - anterior cruciate ligament, which connects the femur and the tibia and basically keeps the knee functioning properly. It's kind of a horrific process, basically cutting the bone into a new shape and adding a metal plate and some other hardware. But you do what you gotta do, and this seemed the best fix.
That didn't happen.
The surgeon was concerned that the swelling around the bad leg (there's damage in both, but only one was a full tear) might be something else. Something unfun. Something cancerous. In the literal sense.
It was. The initial test detected cancer cells, but wasn't enough to definitively diagnose. The surgeon had suspected two possibilities, one a soft tissue sarcoma - nasty but treatable, and rarely metastasizes , and one a malignant histiocytosis that Rotts and a few other breeds are prone to that virtually always does, and is basically unstoppable.
Two weeks. Two weeks it takes them to run the additional tests.
And now, we know. It's the good news, such as it is - soft tissue sarcoma in the joint, not the Rottweiler Death Cancer. So that's good, that's really good.
But oh Jesus, what we're doing to her now.
When they say treatable, what that means is this: She's losing the leg.
And because the other leg isn't 100%, they won't even be able to do that until they go in and do the original ACL repair surgery on the "good" leg to stabilize it.
I'm a fucking basket case. I mean, I know it's not rational, but I feel like I'm sending her off to be hacked and mutilated and it's killing me. She's totally healthy in every other way, and I know she'll come through and adjust and be just fine. But god. And she's been at my dad's since this all began since she can't manage the stairs and the time when she can come home keeps getting pushed further and further.
So, yeah. I'm fucking losing it, and I'm really terrified of what the next few months will hold. And there's some complicating factors that I won't go in to but jeez. I want to go back a year and undo every single fucking thing that's happened and every decision I've made. I can do that right? Right?
That didn't happen.
The surgeon was concerned that the swelling around the bad leg (there's damage in both, but only one was a full tear) might be something else. Something unfun. Something cancerous. In the literal sense.
It was. The initial test detected cancer cells, but wasn't enough to definitively diagnose. The surgeon had suspected two possibilities, one a soft tissue sarcoma - nasty but treatable, and rarely metastasizes , and one a malignant histiocytosis that Rotts and a few other breeds are prone to that virtually always does, and is basically unstoppable.
Two weeks. Two weeks it takes them to run the additional tests.
And now, we know. It's the good news, such as it is - soft tissue sarcoma in the joint, not the Rottweiler Death Cancer. So that's good, that's really good.
But oh Jesus, what we're doing to her now.
When they say treatable, what that means is this: She's losing the leg.
And because the other leg isn't 100%, they won't even be able to do that until they go in and do the original ACL repair surgery on the "good" leg to stabilize it.
I'm a fucking basket case. I mean, I know it's not rational, but I feel like I'm sending her off to be hacked and mutilated and it's killing me. She's totally healthy in every other way, and I know she'll come through and adjust and be just fine. But god. And she's been at my dad's since this all began since she can't manage the stairs and the time when she can come home keeps getting pushed further and further.
So, yeah. I'm fucking losing it, and I'm really terrified of what the next few months will hold. And there's some complicating factors that I won't go in to but jeez. I want to go back a year and undo every single fucking thing that's happened and every decision I've made. I can do that right? Right?