The View from 58-inches High

Going to work has been so difficult. Given how bad Fozzy did with his sutures last time I’m terrified every minute that I’m gone. It takes all the strength in the world for me to open the bedroom door when I get home. Every time, I find him doing fine, laying in bed with his nub wagging to see me. Every time I expect the worst.

He’s having a really difficult time with the hardwood and tile floors. Luckily, he will wear the booty I bought him. It helps but it doesn’t fix it. He needs to adjust his walking style so he’s not propelling himself across the floor. He’s become terrified of some areas of the room, even wearing the booty. This has been so difficult to handle by myself. Bennett is desperate for attention but I have to keep a constant eye on Fozzy. Bennett trying to get near me to steal attention has lead to him stepping on Fozzy’s stub multiple times.

I also haven’t been able to sleep because Fozzy wakes me up every time he shifts position. I’ve been a walking zombie this week. I feel barley functional and I seriously think I’m on the verge of crying all the time. I know things will get better but I feel so guilty for what Fozzy is going through now.

Brian gets home tomorrow and I’m just hoping we don’t get the results of the histopath until after he’s home. I don’t know that I can take bad news with out him.

Fozzy won’t come home until Friday. I had been hopeful that since he was recovering so well he would come home Thursday but he’s still draining so Friday it is. I was able to visit him today though. I was nervous about how he would look and act. It felt like it took them forever to bring him in to me.

It was nice to see how well he was moving around. He was able to lie down and get up on his own. He still had the drain in and seemed really loopy. I’m sure he was happy to see me but not in the way I would have liked. It’s like he couldn’t relax. He just walked around the room sniffing at things and trying to get comfortable. I brought his favorite stuffed animal but he didn’t seem interested.

I know it shouldn’t bother me that, after a major surgery, he seems unsettled and didn’t want to play with his toy but it did bother me. I hope that when he gets home he’ll settle in better. I know that thinking he is “depressed” is inane but I worry that he’s not comfortable. I worry most that his spleen was bothering him more than we thought and was just masked by his leg being so painful.

I’m counting the hours until I get to bring my baby home. I hope I made the “right choice”.

The house seems very quiet. Bennett is playing with the treats toy Fozzy never lets him play with, Brian is playing video games, and I’m still in awe that I’m still awake.

The storm came through around 2:00 in the morning and didn’t seem to end until just before 5:00AM. It was as if this storm came to make up for all the rain we didn’t get. More thunder and lightning than I can remember in a long time. All night I tossed and turned. No telling if I would have slept poorly anyway but that’s what I did when the noise was too much to sleep through.

I wrapped myself in my trench coat and took the dogs outside to get the morning business out of the way. While the thunder had subsided, the sky was alive with lights. I try not to be superstitious but I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of anxiety. We haven’t had a storm like this in 7 or more years and today of all mornings, after the worst drought in recent memory, the sky opens up. It stormed the night before my sister’s wedding and caused the worst flooding in Kentucky in 40-years, then it stormed again the day my nephew was born. Neither of those events have had great outcomes. I watched Fozzy hop around the yard and said another prayer that I was doing the right thing.

The morning came too quickly. While the rain had abated, roughly 5-inches in 4-hours had left many of the roads around town flooded and completely closed. With that in mind, we set out early to make sure we weren’t late and to try and beat traffic. The drive was actually uneventful and ended up being 1-hour early; which was more than enough time to grab a bagel and coffee.

Our consult with the surgeon went well except for her obvious disapproval that we were not going to remove his spleen. Other than that, she was very nice and really took a lot of time to prepare us for what he would be like after the surgery. Again, I wondered.

Around 1:00 they called and said he had gotten through surgery fantastically and that we might get to take him home on Thursday instead of Friday. It was great news but until I see him, walking and playing and being his old self, I will wonder.

We are finally getting some much needed rain. Today the sky turned black and, with little warning at all, heavy rain pounded down on us. In so many ways it echoed my mood. Today we had to make the chose for Fozzy. We finally got the call on Tuesday, sitting in the parking lot of the wedding I had actually, that both biopsies were inconclusive. More than that, the pathology lab thought the suspected plasma cell tumor. This was something we were completely unprepared for… hope.

Plasma cell tumor (or plamsacytoma) is a rare condition in dogs, accounting for less than 8% of hematopoietic tumors. The diagnosis can sometimes be made by looking for elevated proteins in the blood work. Unfortunately, these proteins only become elevated once the cancer is in the bone marrow meaning the test is not conclusive. We opted to do the test anyway because it was cheap and relatively quick. We took him in on Wednesday to have his blood drawn and knew it would be two or more days before we heard back.

Late Friday afternoon we got the call that the blood test was also inconclusive. At this point, her suggestion was that we remove the spleen and have it biopsied. This was extremely difficult news to hear. We’ve already spent a ton of money for nothing and now we have to choose a course of treatment with no information. Our biggest issue was that he seemed fine except that he can’t use his leg.

As the weekend went on he seemed to deteriorate. He became lethargic and had difficulty getting comfortable. His appetite never suffered and he seemed to want to participate but didn’t feel comfortable moving around. We are obviously worried about his spleen, but if he does have the plasmacytoma, the spleen tumor should react well to the chemo. I don’t think he will ever use his leg again.

Monday we called the doctor with our decision. We were going to hedge our bets and amputate, using the leg for the biopsy instead of the spleen. The original plan was to do both, remove the spleen and biopsy the leg (without amputation). Knowing that he will likely never use his leg again, we knew we had to amputate. We also decided it was too probably that the tumors were related to justify removing his spleen as well. These were all very difficult decisions!

The final decision to pull the trigger came when we got the quote for the amputation. It was more than we’d hoped. Not as much as the splenectomy, but more than we’d hoped. By the time we got the quote we only had 4-hours left to make a decision. We got the quote today and he has to have the surgery tomorrow or wait until Monday. He’s in so much pain; I didn’t feel we could wait. Plus, Brian will be in Dallas all next week. So the decision is made, for better or worse.

We take him to the vet first thing in the morning. The weather forecast is for very severe storms. Part of me feels like it’s an omen. I keep telling myself I’m not doing this for me. I don’t know if that’s true. There have been so many times that I’ve thought death would be peace for my baby. It will be true someday but not today. I still see the fight in his eyes. We pick him up Friday. More to come.

This last week has been horrible. I feel like I’m stuck in an emotional void. I can’t morn a dog that’s still alive but my life is not normal right now. I have no choice but to continue as close to normal as possible but I’m plagued by this constant feeling that I forgot something very important… ohh right, my dog is dying.

Yesterday came and went with no call from the vet. More than anything, I hate the waiting. I want to do something. Schedule his surgery, decide on treatment, and get back to living while he can. I’m screaming, crying, and clawing helplessly inside. On the outside, I’m trying not to let this consume me so that I can enjoy my time with him.

As is always true, when it rains if pours. I have a wedding this week (Tuesday no less), a meeting on Sunday, and just got hit with an unexpected presentation next week. I’m just trying to push through. Training? What training? It’s difficult to give things up, but sometimes it’s just time.

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.