He has cancer?

I took Henry to the vet on May 27th for a lump on his left leg/foot area.  This was not a new occurrence for us, Henry has numerous fatty cysts and has even had two previous surgeries to remove lumps on his left leg in 12/2012 and 10/2015.  Even though the previous lumps were not cancer, my vet wanted them removed because if they were to get too big there isn’t much skin on the leg and there can be problems.  When the new lump showed up between his dewclaw and his bottom foot pad I was a little annoyed.  I mean, he just had surgery in October.  I even joked, the next surgery is going to be to remove this leg because it is causing us nothing but problems.  It was small.  About the size of a grape.  Like all his other fatty cysts, I went into the “Lets keep an eye on this mode.”  Nothing changed for weeks.  I knew I had to get him in and I know how much he hates the vet so I figured, I’ll wait for his September check up and have her poke it then and she can tell me, it’s another fatty cyst and tell me if he should have surgery or not.  Nothing appeared wrong with Henry.  Always hungry, check.  Loves car rides, check.  Long walks, check.  Follows me around the house, check.  Everything was in check.  He was fine.  Happy.  Perfect to me.

The weekend after Mother’s day arrived and as I was petting Henry it seemed like his lump had gotten bigger.  Was it bigger?  I check it everyday, convinced myself that I’m a crazy paranoid dog lady and we carried on with life.  A decision that still haunts me.  By the next week, I was sure, I’m not crazy.  This thing is getting bigger.  Darn it Henry.  As if somehow this is his fault.  I decided to make an appointment to get him in to have it looked at.  I’ll take Friday the 27th off and get a long weekend in.  And literally everyday that week it got bigger.

We got to the vet.  She poked him and put the sample on the slide.  I wait to hear it looks clear, let me take it in back and I’ll know for sure.  Instead I hear, there’s a lot of blood here.  I don’t remember everything after that.  Except the wait.  I’ve had at least 10+ of these cysts looked at and it doesn’t take this long.

When she came back she said something about abnormal spindle cells, but still a lot of good cells.  She couldn’t make a determination so she wanted to send the sample out and she wouldn’t charge me for the histology.  Determination about what?  What kind of fatty cyst this is, because… it’s a fatty cyst.  You know him.  He has a bunch of them.  I don’t care what kind of fat it is.  She said she’d have the results in a week.

I made it to the parking lot without crying and that’s the furthest I made it.  I cried the whole way home.  I cried until I was physically exhausted and had no more energy to cry.  I held him, wiped my nose on his lush soft curls.  We took a nap.  He nuzzled his head in my neck and I said we would never get up from the couch and we would spend the rest of our lives cuddled together where nothing bad would happen to either of us.

I was at work on Tuesday the 31st when my cell phone rang.  It was the vets office.  I don’t know why I thought the fact that I was hearing from them sooner than expected would mean good news.  I answered, there was a conversation.  He has a soft tissue sarcoma…

Author: justdebbie9

Henry was diagnosed with cancer on 5/31/16. Front left leg amputated on 6/8/16. 10 year old pekepoo. My best friend and soulmate. View all posts by justdebbie9