I feel REALLY bad about this, so I guess you could call this a sympathy plea.
My mom has this wonderful dog, a golden retriever, who loves everybody. Casey is one of my favorite dogs ever. She’s had a cyst on her shoulder for a while and finally last week they took her in to get it removed. Today my mom calls me and tells me that the vet said that not only is it malignant, and has apparently metastasized to her bloodstream, it’s very unusual, and the vet in question is going to have to confer with some experts before they have any idea whether it’s treatable.
As my mom said, “She might have two days or two years!” As you can imagine, she’s even more upset than I am. Casey is her first dog, and a lovely one at that. Right now she seems quite happy, it isn’t bothering her at all, which is a relief. But all the “what ifs” are going around in my head…this is rough.
I understand- my husband’s yellow Lab Caesar had a lump that turned out to be cancer. They removed it, but nerve damage at the site caused him to bite at it forever after. It had metastasized to his heart (more specifically, the pericardial sac), but we didn’t know until he almost dies one day. We lost him about two weeks after the first drain of the fluid in the pericardial sac (500ml).
It was so hard, and you can’t explain what’s happening to them. We just told him how much we loved him, gave him all his favorite treats & toys, and hugged him a lot.
I know I will get flamed into next week for this, but my mom changed the dog’s diet (to some very expensive dog food with a higher fat content), is giving her vitamins, some weird homeopathic stuff and (I think) linseed oil. The dog also has discovered the joys of the chiropractor and will snuggle up, butt first, to him with all the subtlety of a 17 yr old demanding a backrub from her boyfriend. It’s weird.
But the dog is six weeks into the expected “six months to live”, and when I was down for Thanksgiving, was as bright and healthy as ever and had gained six pounds (not much for a dog that was 120 pounds anyway, but still…). You can still feel the lump under her neck, but if it wasn’t for that I’d say nothing had changed.
Please don’t despair, medical science is making great strides and there may be something to help your mom’s dog.
Thanks, guys. I certainly haven’t given up; I was telling her earlier, it’s amazing what they can do. As I said, right now, the dog is her usual happy self. That helps a lot; last year my cat was deathly ill (he’s fine now) and the worst part was seeing him in pain.
I’ll feel better once we get more news. And I have few doubts that my mom is going to be in VERY CLOSE contact with the vet until they decide what might be an appropriate way to go. (Mom says the vet told her the inside of the thing was bright blue, which she had never seen before…very weird.)
Also, they found a simple solution to keeping Casey from yanking off her bandage and scratching and biting at the site; they put a T-shirt on her (a fairly tight one, obviously, I think her current one is a big kid’s size) and she leaves it alone. I guess it must look pretty silly, though. Being a dog, what does she care about silly?