I have been a bit quiet on social media this last week. Two reasons for this. First, I am sick. With that comes exhaustion. Second, I am nursing our sweet pup back to health after her leg amputation.
If you have not been following along, you can learn more about our diagnosis here and the turning point and choice to amputate here.
Our Mia has been in our lives since she was 5 weeks old. I was clinging to hope for a miracle and 2 weeks ago, I felt like we got one. The vet told us that her cancer had not metastasized and that it was likely we were dealing with a much less aggressive type of cancer. The option we had was amputation, then pathology testing on the removed tumor. We decided to go for it.
Last Thursday my husband took our girl in and they did blood work to ensure she was ready for surgery. All was clear and we were hopeful! Her leg was removed without a hitch and within hours she was ready to come home and already feeling completely better without that horrible cancerous tumor hanging off her.
Recovery so far has been going ok. She is hard to contain and back to being ornery and playful. She refuses to stay still and is already a pro on 3 legs. We had a minor hiccup on Saturday when we woke up to the side of her face being full of a surface infection. I rushed her back to the vet and they ended up shaving her face and cleaning the infection.
The infection was from her having to wear a cone and drooling all over in the cone and then laying in it. It was pretty irritated and it smelled to high heavens. It took 3 people to hold her still while the vet shaved and cleaned up her face which with 3 legs and only being about 48 hours post-surgery, tells you how strong she is.
With animals everything is a waiting game. We had to wait and see what the tumor did, we had to wait for the amputation, we had to wait for pathology to tell us exactly what type of cancer we had removed.
Yesterday, the pathology report came and it was NOT the news we were hoping for. Mia’s cancer was the highly aggressive osteosarcoma. We are not sure if it has metastasized microscopically or not and we won’t know until we see changes in her breathing and behavior. It was heartbreaking but at the same time we would not change our current treatment plans for her.
Her quality of life is a million times better than it was, she is back to being our happy girl and the pain for her even as she recovers is very minimal and she does not seem to be bothered that there is a missing leg.
Just keep sending love and prayers and good thoughts that there is no metastasis for a very long time and that she is able to live a few more years with our little family. That is the best we can hope for.
