Those are the three words I hoped to never share. You’ll see this all started about 6-8 weeks ago with ‘digestion issues’. A simple case of diarrhea led to multiple tests, different diets and medications, and here is where we are..
So we finally progressed to seeing a specialist who could do a bigger and better ultrasound. As we arranged for the appointment, Sadie took a turn for the worse and we noticed her belly becoming distended. When we took her in and weighed her, we confirmed she was retaining no less than half a gallon of fluid in her abdomen. While losing muscle mass and weight throughout her body, her belly was becoming large.
We got her in the examination room and prepared her for the ultrasound. Her belly was shaved, she was placed in a v-shape wedge of a table to hold her on her back, and the exam began. It was all mellow and easy, with Sadie just being a good girl and letting the vet do his work. Almost immediately we stumbled into ‘the masses’. This was not a good sign. In fact, it was the worse thing he was hoping to discover.
With the masses, it was then decided to extract samples from her abdomen in an effort to collect cells for testing. A needle was inserted three times (again, with little to no drama from Sadie – she just let it happen) and fluid was pulled. Unfortunately, these tests were inconclusive. (I’ll need to come back in fill in the details soon…)
Without the proof, the working diagnosis was still cancer. her regular vet pulled more samples a few days later and also took x-rays of her chest. It’s not uncommon for cancer to have already spread, so it was sort of expected to find growths on her lungs already. ‘Good news’ was nothing on her chest, but her lymphoma (at this point I’m just trying to guess/remember what everything was called, because believe me, I was more or less in shock as the diagnosis was shared) was enlarged which was also another sign of her body fighting cancer.
So here’s the bitch of it all. She has cancer, and doesn’t want to eat. Almost everything makes her sick. So while cancer is the illness, to be quite frank, she is dying from starvation. Dana and I find ourselves in those horrible crossroads of not wanting her to suffer, not wanting to say goodbye at all, and not wanting to say goodbye until the absolute last moment it is best for all of us. Simply, this fucking sucks.
