Jezebel Has Cancer

Over the last few weeks I've been spending less time with shelter animals and more time with my own.  Jezebel, my soul dog, had a large lump in her right flank.  I first noticed it as a minor raised area at around Thanksgiving, and by early February it had grown past "golf ball" size and into "tangerine" size. It had grown enough that I finally had to admit to myself that something was wrong. And even though I knew it in my head, it wasn't real until I started telling people of my suspicions.

Once I accepted that there was an issue, I obsessively scoured the internet to figure out what it was.  I looked at pictures.  I watched youtube videos (which were quite gross in a fascinating kind of way).  I hoped for a benign lipoma, but felt deep in my heart that it was some kind of cancer.

Lipomas can be quite large, but they grow slow.  That was my first red flag.

Lipomas generally just kind of float around under the skin.  They aren't attached to anything.  This mass was pretty firmly anchored down.  I couldn't grab it and move it around. 

Lipomas are usually pretty soft and squishy. It's pliable and the dog doesn't generally know you're even messing with it.  Jezebel was absolutely aware of when I was poking around at her.  It didn't seem to hurt her at all, but she didn't like me messing with it.

When it was clear that the "watch and wait" method wasn't going to end favorably, I took her to the vet to have it examined.  It was aspirated, the vet looked at it under the microscope, and he said all he got out of it was blood.  No tissue, fatty or otherwise.

This was not what I wanted to hear.  Although it was better than "I see lots of granules", because that indicates Mast Cell Tumors, it was nowhere near as good as "All I saw was fat", which would have allowed me to exhale, take my girl home, and carry on like normal.

The only way to identify it was to have it removed and biopsied.  It was crushing news to me. As a single mother living in an area with a high cost of living, I'm not someone who has $1100 sitting in a nice emergency bank account for things like this, though I wish I did. So I went into problem solving mode and wracked my brain to find an answer.

When I got home I posted about the vet visit on Facebook.  I wrote about my problem (no money), I wrote about the pro's and con's (pro: it'll be gone! con: recovery wouldn't be as easy as it was when she was young). I wrote about treatment vs. no treatment.

My sister-in-law and a couple of my friends suggested that I do a Go Fund Me.  I was really hesitant to do that. For one thing, I share fund raisers for needy homeless animals all the time.  Jezebel has a home. The other thing is that I have trouble asking for anything. And in my mind I couldn't ask for help because she is my dog and it's my responsibility to figure it out. But, desperation prompted me to create Jezzy's fund page, and in less than 12 hours my generous friends and a couple of strangers funded the whole thing!  I can never thank them enough.

First thing the next business day, I called the vet and scheduled her surgery.  It happened on Friday the 13th.  Hers was the second surgery of the day, so she was done and recovering by 11:30.  The vet said that he wasn't able to get clean margins, but that it was tightly encapsulated, and he was hopeful that taking it out would solve her problem.

Waiting for the biopsy results was maddening.   First, it was a three day weekend.  Then there was a snow storm. I didn't find out the results until the following Thursday, when I took Jezzy in because her recovery wasn't going very smoothly.

My poor girl.  She was on Tramadol and Rimadyl  and still wasn't putting weight on her foot. She was leaking serum everywhere and it was just all around gross.  I was very worried that she had pulled an internal stitch, but it turns out that there was a lot of "negative space" in that spot now, and the body tried to fill it.  That's where the leakage came from.  We got some antibiotics and the filling/leaking began to subside right away. 

Anyway, during that visit the vet (not the one who did the surgery, I went for the first available appointment with whoever was there) looked at the biopsy and said it turned out to be a soft-tissue sarcoma.  The identification didn't go any farther than that, though it's likely to be a Hermangiosarcoma, as the surgeon suspected to begin with.  Whatever kind of sarcoma it is,  the vet couldn't get all of it. He scraped out as much as he could, but there just wasn't enough tissue in that area to get clean margins.

So, what I know is, it will grow back.  I don't know how fast or slow it will be, but it will, for sure, come back.  When it does it will be tangled more deeply, and the mass will be larger. This type of cancer doesn't usually spread to other parts of the body or organs, but it is very locally invasive.  She'll be able to live with it until it starts to cause problems with her mobility.  I was told it could grow back in three months or a year, there's no way to know. And when it does come back, she may live another year, or she may have complications right away.  I'm hoping for two years of good quality of life.  It seems like a reasonable guestimation.

I chose not to pursue radiation and chemo because

1. It's insanely expensive.
2. She would feel sick and miserable and I'm not willing to put her through that.
3. The vet said it might only buy a couple of moths, if that, because her type of cancer doesn't respond well to treatment.

Tonight she gets her sutures removed.  I'm happy because, to me, it signifies the end of this ordeal.  All that's left is to enjoy and be thankful for every second I have left with her.  While I'm doing that, my shelter volunteer efforts are going to be cut down.  There will be no fostering, because she doesn't like strange animals in her house, and I'm not going to make her share.  It will be tough on me, because if I don't volunteer enough I get an itch.  But my focus is on Jezebel and her happiness.  When the time comes and she leaves me, I will do what I always do.  I will heal my heart by volunteering and fostering.  I will save others in her memory. She will send me the ones who need me the most.  And every time I take care of one, I will feel her in my heart.  It will be full, and it won't hurt. 

She will always be my soul dog .