(no subject)
so, guess who's having surgery on tuesday?
that's right -- zoe! on the eve of the removal of her staples (from her splenectomy 2 weeks ago), this thing she's had on her rump (that the vets and i all thought was a never-healed-properly hot spot) flared into a bizarre, nasty, 'what-the-fuck-IS-that-thing' growth. the vet did a needle biopsy, and yes, ladies and gents, it's cancer. it's another mast cell tumor -- her eighth.
did i mention that this thing is naaa-aaaa-aaasty? smack in the middle is a little pocket of necrotic tissue. which is completely bizarre, given that the histopathology on her spleen showed that it also had necrotic tissue in the middle of it. what's all this dead stuff on my dog? oh, she's 13, you say? no excuse!
at least, this thing on zoe's rump isn't foul-scented, nor is it producing anything (pus, lymph, etc). which is a good thing, because....
ohmyfuckinggod. roux has started having seizures again. 7 since NYE. which is bad. very, very, very fucking bad. another bad thing is that the nature of her epilepsy has changed -- both her responses to seizures and her general personality have changed in the last 5 days. it's also very bad that it seems there is likely some permanent brain damage. she's forgotten housebreaking. she often acts as if she doesn't remember her name. she bumps into things (for those of you who are familiar with epilepsy, this is post- post-dictal), and has these weird seizure spasms which interrupt her walking or standing for 2-3 seconds, and then she's "back." these too, are bad bad signs.
she's become more aggressive, too. i don't think she means to be aggressive -- it actually seems, to me, to be another kind of seizure. a major focal seizure can manifest in bizarre behavior, aggression, and other dramatic behavior. an example: earlier this evening, she started biting at the metal table legs. sort of like she was trying to play tug with them. for no reason. after doing so for quite a long time, she became fascinated with the NW corner of my 'dining room.' and on and on.
so it seems that these leash-spasms i've been dealing with -- where she just freaks out and acts like a feral dog who's never been collared, biting at the leash and tugging at it with unreasonable thrashing, erratic fishtailing, violent shaking -- might just be examples of these major focal seizures i've been reading about.. i read a number of discussion boards that lead me to believe that these spasms are indeed these seizures, which are quite rare and not at all related to her other seizures.
so, i'm doing a lot of laundry, trying to be calm in my decisionmaking as i deal with a more-than-unruly, very strong, likely brain-damaged dog. earlier this evening, i was 80% sure she needed to be euthanized. she had latched onto my sweater, and was tugging madly. lots of people online say that dogs experiencing a strengthening of seizure experiences often get "nippy." now, "nippy" is not necessarily the word i'd use for how she was acting, but she definitely wasn't in i'm-going-to-gore-you mode, either.
i have a muzzle, and a lot of experience.
uh, yeah. once again, i find myself saying, "if ya got any good juju to spare, couldja send some my way?" or, more specifically, our way? kthxbai.
i haven't slept in a long time. it's 7:45 am. let's see how long this set of sheets stays clean. 'night.