the big 'C'
Hello LJ. It's been awhile. A long while, actually. Granted, I read you from time to time, but I must admit, my tendencies for posting about my personal life or well, anything about my life have been limited to (like many others) facebook. Unfortunately though, my reason for visiting and posting to you tonight requires me to be a bit more verbose, and so I've come back to you - at least for now.
So here I am in the second week of February 2011 and things haven't been going so well. I returned home from a tradeshow in CA not last Friday, but the Friday before and slowly started feeling ill. All signs pointed to yet another sinus infection, which is something that I'm quite used to by now, but by Monday, I had developed a fever and a rather nasty cough. I haven't felt this ill in quite some time. I made it a point to visit the doctor today and although it's not the flu, I have basically every symptom of it. The good news is though, it's not the flu. It's bacterial, and not viral and thus I have antibiotics to help clear it up in the near future.
But my own malady isn't the reason for this post. This post is more about Mavvy, who you may or may not know is my 8 year old Newfoundland. I rescued Mav when he was 2 after living with an abusive family who decided they had had enough of him and brought him to the vet to be put down. He had rather nasty ear infections as well as a skin infection that left him in extremely rough shape. Fortunately for me, the vet nursed him back to health and I brought him home almost 6 years ago. I had hoped that the worst was behind him.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. A few week ago I brought him to the groomer. When I went to pick him up, he had a rather bad limp. I chalked it up to arthritis and things did eventually improve, but not to the degree that I had hoped, so I brought him to the vet. She checked him over and confirmed that he did have arthritis in his frown paws, but felt a growth on one of his back paws. She took an x-ray and eventually sent us to a surgeon at red bank animal hospital. This was Tuesday morning. The surgeon reviewed his x-rays and did another thorough exam and decided that his center toe on his rear left paw would have to be removed. So John and I brought him back this morning and dropped him off. Surgery was performed this afternoon and the vet called with the news. Surgery went well, but she could tell that the growth was definitely cancer. During the exam, she realized that one his lymph nodes in the same leg looked iffy, so that was removed today as well. Both are being sent for biopsy to determine if the cancer spread to the lymph system and what type of cancer it is. This was not the news I wanted to hear.
My first dog, a Golden Retriever named Midas, died of cancer. My second dog, a Bernese Mountain Dog named Blaze died of kidney disease. And now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to go through this again. The best case scenario is that the cancer was limited to the toe, and now that it's been removed, so has the cancer and he'll be fine. At the other end of the spectrum is that it's spread to his lymph nodes and then tough choices will have to be made. John and I have already decided that we're not going to put the dog through chemo, and so that pretty much answers the question of how actively we'll treat it. I feel conflicted about that, but my past history shows that it doesn't work all that well and basically just reduces their quality of life.
I hate the fact that I have to deal with this. Selfish me asks, 'is it too much to have a pet that doesn't get some horrible illness'? But hopefully, I won't have to think about this. Hopefully, the tests will come back and show that all is well and I won't have to worry. But in the meantime, until those tests come back, that's all I'm going to do.
So here I am in the second week of February 2011 and things haven't been going so well. I returned home from a tradeshow in CA not last Friday, but the Friday before and slowly started feeling ill. All signs pointed to yet another sinus infection, which is something that I'm quite used to by now, but by Monday, I had developed a fever and a rather nasty cough. I haven't felt this ill in quite some time. I made it a point to visit the doctor today and although it's not the flu, I have basically every symptom of it. The good news is though, it's not the flu. It's bacterial, and not viral and thus I have antibiotics to help clear it up in the near future.
But my own malady isn't the reason for this post. This post is more about Mavvy, who you may or may not know is my 8 year old Newfoundland. I rescued Mav when he was 2 after living with an abusive family who decided they had had enough of him and brought him to the vet to be put down. He had rather nasty ear infections as well as a skin infection that left him in extremely rough shape. Fortunately for me, the vet nursed him back to health and I brought him home almost 6 years ago. I had hoped that the worst was behind him.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. A few week ago I brought him to the groomer. When I went to pick him up, he had a rather bad limp. I chalked it up to arthritis and things did eventually improve, but not to the degree that I had hoped, so I brought him to the vet. She checked him over and confirmed that he did have arthritis in his frown paws, but felt a growth on one of his back paws. She took an x-ray and eventually sent us to a surgeon at red bank animal hospital. This was Tuesday morning. The surgeon reviewed his x-rays and did another thorough exam and decided that his center toe on his rear left paw would have to be removed. So John and I brought him back this morning and dropped him off. Surgery was performed this afternoon and the vet called with the news. Surgery went well, but she could tell that the growth was definitely cancer. During the exam, she realized that one his lymph nodes in the same leg looked iffy, so that was removed today as well. Both are being sent for biopsy to determine if the cancer spread to the lymph system and what type of cancer it is. This was not the news I wanted to hear.
My first dog, a Golden Retriever named Midas, died of cancer. My second dog, a Bernese Mountain Dog named Blaze died of kidney disease. And now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to go through this again. The best case scenario is that the cancer was limited to the toe, and now that it's been removed, so has the cancer and he'll be fine. At the other end of the spectrum is that it's spread to his lymph nodes and then tough choices will have to be made. John and I have already decided that we're not going to put the dog through chemo, and so that pretty much answers the question of how actively we'll treat it. I feel conflicted about that, but my past history shows that it doesn't work all that well and basically just reduces their quality of life.
I hate the fact that I have to deal with this. Selfish me asks, 'is it too much to have a pet that doesn't get some horrible illness'? But hopefully, I won't have to think about this. Hopefully, the tests will come back and show that all is well and I won't have to worry. But in the meantime, until those tests come back, that's all I'm going to do.