Fozzy’s Prognosis
This last week has been a blur. Monday I got home from work and Fozzy was not walking on his left rear leg. This had been ongoing for some time but usually in the mornings so we attributed it to his hip dyspepsia. Over the next two days, his lip got noticeably worse so I has happy I made the appointment. The vet looked him over and took X-rays of his back hip. I knew something was wrong when she didn’t come back right away. After a long time the vet tech told us they found something odd on the x-ray and they were going to need to get him into a different position for the x-ray. Finally, after being there over an hour, I got the news. He had a huge lytic lesion on his knee which means his bone is being eaten away by something. In Fozzy’s case, and in most cases like this, that thing is osteosarcoma; cancer.
I wasn’t nearly as devastated as I should have been; I think because he had a malignant melanoma 18-months ago. I made an appointment with the canine oncologist for that Friday, not really sure what to expect but thinking amputation would buy us some time. In the first 15-minutes of her exam she found a very large (baseball sized) growth on his spleen. She said it was very odd because spleen tumors are usually soft and his is very hard.
We left him there to have biopsies and an ultrasound done. Unfortunately, neither of the biopsies was conclusive. Knowing what type of cancer is in his spleen could decide our course of treatment so right now we are stuck waiting again. The results should be in Monday or Tuesday and then we can figure out what to do and move forward.
Friday night I cried alot. I couldn’t sleep and woke up with my heart racing. I was terrified his spleen would burst and I had nightmares that he was in immense pain and couldn’t’ tell me. Meanwhile, Fozzy isn’t letting anything slow him down. He is not using his rear leg at all but this morning he got really feisty and started hopping around in play-position.