We made it a week! Not a lot has changed since my last post. We’re just taking it easy and going day by day. He’s had several visitors this week and my neighbor even brought him a treat bag (and a treat for mom too). He’s always excited when people stop by and hops up to the door to greet them.
Not a bad life as a tripawd!
Nice weather means getting to spend the day outside
Happy National Dog Day from Toby the Tripawd!!
Toby has made a lot of progress in the last 24 hours. He had no problems last night and is hoping around like a champ.
First of all thank you for all helpful responses and support. It makes this easier.
We didn’t get much sleep last night. He kept whining and trying to re-position himself. I gave him all his meds, and he had no problem drinking water and eating wet food so hopefully it’s just this phase. I pulled the cushions off the couch and put them on the floor next to his bed and he seemed ok when I was petting him.
On a positive note I think he enjoyed the fresh air this morning.
First night home
Quick Update:
Dr. Martin called last night and said that surgery went well. They were going to monitor him overnight and call me in the morning.
This morning Dr. Martin came in to Toby standing in his kennel ready to go. I will pick him up after work. 🙂
Welcome to Toby’s Tripawd website!
I dropped him off at MedVet today for surgery. My little four legged partner in crime is going to be a new tripawd.
As anyone on here knows it hasn’t been an easy decision. So here’s the timeline of how this all developed:
On June 30th I was watching A Dog’s Purpose and laying on the floor with Toby when I noticed a lump. I called his regular vet first thing in the morning and asked if they had time to check him out. I dropped him off in the morning and told them I needed him back by 2pm because I was going out of town. The vet called and said it could be just a lump from laying on hard surfaces or it could be something more. They would need to do some test. He got x-rays and a they took a sample from a needle test. The x-rays showed that the lump wasn’t attached to the bone (yay!) but the needle test was inconclusive. Her suggestion was to do surgery and if they opened him up and it didn’t look like just a fatty lump they would just take a small sample and send it in for biopsy. If it did they would just take it out.
After lots of thought I went to another vet (Allisonville Animal Hospital) and met with Dr. Winkhart. She went over the reports from the first vet and talked with me for about an hour. (I’ll spare you all the details). We decided to do surgery and remove the whole mass and send the whole thing in for biopsy. Surgery was on July 21st and went well. We knew ahead of time that she wouldn’t be able to get margins so if it was cancer it would still be there. When I picked him up she said that it didn’t look like fat and that it looked like a brain. That was pretty hard to hear. The biospy results would be back in a week and half to two weeks.
In just over a week the results came back and in my gut I knew what I was going to hear but I wasn’t ready for it. It was “Grade 2 soft tissue sarcoma (perivascular wall tumor)”. Jibberish to someone who works in the financial field. They key word I heard on the phone was CANCER. The other big thing was “the 3-year survival rate was 80% for grade 1, 50% for grade 2, and 20% for dogs with grade 3 tumors.”. I of course spent a lot of time on google the next day or so which I would not suggest.
They next step was to meet with the oncologist. I made an appointment at MedVet for August 8th. We’re fortunate to have many great friends and my friend Sarah offered to come with me. I didn’t want to ask anyone to take off work to come with me so her offer was a big relief. She asked lots of questions because the meeting was just a blur to me. She also understood more of what he was saying and explained a few things to me when he was out of the room.
There were 3 options (In my non technical words – I’ll post the official report later):
Here’s the kicker… the 2 surgeries would cost around the same amount. If we did chemo that would mean taking him to the cancer center once a month, get blood tests and refill cancer drugs. That would be $500/month! If we did radiation it would be $5K-$6K.
Now i’m a financially secure person but that is A LOT of money to spend on a dog who is already 9 years old. Either way if money were no object I still think I would choose the amputation. The more I thought about it the more I leaned towards that option.
So the next step was to meet with the surgeon. Dr. Martin was great and made me feel a lot better about my choice. He again went over the options and just talked to me and answered the random questions that I thought of. We scheduled surgery for today.
So here we are… I dropped him off this morning.
Toby has to know everything that is going on. We’re waiting to be checked in.
Practicing his tripawd pose.
Last picture before heading to the vet.
