As I begin this journey with Penny and her life with Osteosarcoma, I know that it will inevitably have a sad ending. I am not delusional in believing that she will live forever and that reality is what makes every decision we have faced extremely difficult. I feel compelled to record our experiences in an effort to provide others who find themselves living this nightmare with a first hand account. I invite you along on this journey….
Penny’s from Heaven – February 20, 2009
My family consisted of myself, my husband, my 3 young children and our huge 5 year old Golden Retriever/Great Dane and everything was running smoothly. So I am not at all sure why I felt the need to add another pet to our home and was searching shelters all over the state for an addition to our family. After weeks of constant searching my heart skipped a beat when I came across a beautiful female Saint Bernard that was available at a shelter that was a 2 hour drive from our home. It was the Sunday of President’s Day weekend when I found her and the shelter was closed until Tuesday. First thing Tuesday morning I drove the 2 hours to the shelter and upon first sight, she was forever implanted into my heart. The shelter required a home check and she needed to be spayed so I had to wait until Friday to bring her home.
On Friday February 20, 2009 I made the 2 hour drive again to pick her up and bring her home. The first few days we found that Penny was very uncomfortable in our home. She would seek shelter behind furniture and would cowl in fear if we moved too quickly or spoke too loudly. We quickly realized that she must have come from an abusive home, which would explain why such a beautiful lost and found dog was never reclaimed by her owners. Penny is such a sweet, gentle and loving dog but she had been treated so badly that she did not know how to run and had absolutely no idea what a ball was.
Over the next 32 months my family continued to love Penny and to encourage her to open up and to develop her personality. My family treated Penny with so much love, kindness and patience that she eventually started to run and play. We traveled together, she slept on the floor by my bed, she was protective and followed me everywhere. I love her unlike any other dog I have ever had before.
September 2011
Penny began walking with a slight limp in her front left leg that had no event to cause it. I checked her paw and leg and could not find anything that would cause the limp. I tried an internet search and the only thing that I could come up with is that she might have a bad nail. So I trimmed and filed her nails but the limp was still there and now she is holding the paw up in the air even when she is sitting. A few days later as I was still looking for the cause of the limp, I discovered that there was a dry, hardened piece of poop stuck between her toes and was obviously cutting into her tender flesh. So after removing this foul offender I was certain that her limping would cease. Over the next couple of days she was still limping so I was convinced that the area was now infected and felt it was finally time to visit the vet.
Friday September 30, 2011
As soon as I show the vet the area that I think is infected, he tells me without a doubt that this in not the cause of her limping and he feels that she needs x-rays. He feels that there might be a rupture in the joint or a bone spur. My husband and I have always lived paycheck to paycheck and so we have been very practical with our money. We have always felt that dogs are dogs and that we would never spend excess money on a sick or injured dog, however, I didn’t even hesitate in my decision to have the x-rays done. Because of her size, Penny needed to be anesthetized for the x-rays and so we decided to wait a few days until it fit into our schedule.
Tuesday October 4, 2011
I dropped Penny off in the morning on my way to work and stopped back on my way home to pick her up. When I arrived, the Doctor showed me the x-rays and point blank told me that she had bone cancer. I was in shock. He was going to send the x-rays out to a radiologist for a second opinion but he was very certain that it was cancer. I was just barely able to keep my composure while receiving this horrible news but completely lost it as soon as I was driving home. I had to break this news to my children and husband. I spent the entire evening in tears.
Wednesday October 5, 2011
The doctor is calling me. He wants to know if Penny is not from around here. I tell him that she isn’t. He wants to know where she is from because she might have an infection that is not prevalent where we live and that the infection might be what he is seeing in the bone x-ray. I am now hopeful that she doesn’t have cancer after all but tell him that she was a lost and found and nobody knows where she is from. He wants her to come in tomorrow for a bone biopsy and some chest x-rays.
Now let me tell you, we have spent $40 for the original doctor visit. I just paid $750 for the leg x-rays, blood tests and pain killers. Now I have to decide if I am going to pay for these additional costs. Do I just let this thing run it’s course without the tests? Here’s my dilemma: the cancer is not treatable and she will have to be euthanized, but with the infection it would be treatable but it will be lengthy and costly. I have only had a short 32 months with her and love her so very much that I have to know if I can save her so I decide to go ahead with the biopsy.
Thursday October 6, 2011
Penny comes home from the biopsy with half the afflicted leg shaved and a huge suture. She has to wear a cone. The doctor tells me to call for the results in a couple of days. My family and I have a good weekend as we hang on to our last thread of hope that we are not dealing with cancer. Oh yeah, it cost me another $950 this time. Thank goodness for credit cards. Oh well.
Monday October 10, 2011
I call the vet twice and can not speak to the doctor but they are leaving a message for the doctor to call me. It is now 8pm and the doctor is finally calling me. It is the after hours emergency vet and not my regular doctor. She kindly breaks the news to me that Penny does indeed have osteosarcoma and the world comes crumbling down and crushes my heart. I am devastated. I know that we now have to have our baby girl euthanized and we have to do it soon before the pain gets any worse. I proceed to spend the next 3 days constantly crying, consoling my children who are constantly crying, taking tons of pictures and video of Penny and spending every moment with her telling her how much we love her. I spend tons of time doing research to see what osteosarcoma is really about and what her chances might be for beating it. Everything that I see is negative. It is without a doubt that she needs to be euthanized and soon. My family has a very hectic schedule and the only day that this will be best for all of us is this coming Sunday the 16th. And so I begin to prepare the children and myself for this horrible day.
Thursday October 13, 2011
I am always a very level headed and practical person who always does the right thing, even when it isn’t what I really want to do, but this time it really isn’t settling with me. There has got to be another way. There has to be something else that I’m supposed to do and so I keep looking on the internet for my answer. I keep reading story after story of dogs that have had amputations and chemo and they don’t even make it another year but then I’m also finding that if the lungs are clear of mets, you might have a little more time. Well, in my shock of receiving the biopsy report, I forgot to ask the results of the chest x-rays so I make a call to the vet to ask. They tell me the lungs were clear. I continue to spend the day reading stories of dogs with OSA but I am occasionally finding stories of dogs that have gone on to survive well over a year following amputation. I make a call to the vet again to ask how much the amputation would cost. The doctor is not available to answer that question so they are leaving a message for him to call me back.
I ask the kids what they think about amputation and they are all for it. They want as much time with her as possible. In respect to only having 32 months with her, any more time we can get is huge. I call the vet again to see when we could get the amputation done. The gal on the phone tells me that the doctor who is working the next day is not able to do that kind of surgery and that I would have to wait until the regular doctor returns on Tuesday, additionally, the doctor will not be able to call me back with a price until Monday, so I make the appointment for Tuesday. Meanwhile, I begin to fret because the growth on her arm has already noticeably increased in size over the past week and waiting 4 more days for the amputation will allow more time for the cancer to spread. I start calling all the other vet hospitals in town to see if they could perform the surgery. There is only one other vet hospital in town that can do it and they can do it tomorrow, but they have to call in a specialist and the cost for the procedure will be $5000. I am once again devastated. I can not justify this kind of expense.
It’s time to take a breather and spend a little more time thinking about this. I have to take my daughter to school for an evening activity and as I am driving back home I am in tears and asking for help. It is just then that my cell phone rings and it is my original vet office calling to let me know that they were able to get the price of the procedure form the vet and he says it will be $2000 for the amputation. Hooray!! I am going to go through with the amputation.
Friday October 14, 2011
It is 8:30am and I am very concerned that waiting until Tuesday for the amputation increases the chances of the cancer to metastasize in the lungs. I do not want to go through with the surgery if it is already too late for my poor little girl so I call the vet to ask if they will take another chest x-ray for me before the surgery. As usual, I have to leave a message for the vet and wait for him to call me back. Over the next hour and a half, I think of half a dozen other questions that I need to ask the doctor and so I decide that it would be best if I made an appointment to come in and talk to the doctor in person. It is now 10:00am and I call the vet to see if they have an opening today for me to come in. Unfortunately, the doctor happens to be standing right there when I call and the gal who answers my call hands the phone right to him.
After apologizing for taking his time and explaining that I was actually calling to schedule an appointment, I proceed to ask him about taking an additional chest x-ray before the amputation surgery. The doctor is one that I have never seen or talked to before but he is very kind and understanding and is not bothered by my phone call. He then talks me through the whole procedure and assures me how simple the amputation is and that she would stay tonight after the surgery and I would take her home tomorrow (I take this as a generalization because he may not know that I have the surgery scheduled for Tuesday). I then ask him if the x-rays need to be scheduled for Monday or if they will do them the day of the surgery. He says, “Oh, you don’t want to do the surgery until Tuesday then”? I ask him what he means wait until Tuesday, that is when she is scheduled. He then tells me that he has her on the surgery schedule for today and that he was wondering why Penny wasn’t there yet as she is scheduled for surgery in one hour. I am now in shock. I told him that I had no idea about that. He tells me that last night he told the gal in his office to call me to tell me that he could do the surgery Friday and that it would cost $1500. Boy did someone really screw up. The doctor apologizes for the error. I am concerned because for the prior x-rays and biopsy, she could not eat or drink anything after 10:00pm the night before so I tell the doctor that she had eaten breakfast at 7:00am. He said that this would not be a problem. He would just bump all the other surgeries ahead of hers and do hers at the end of the day.
I am absolutely a firm believer in a higher power and that things happen for a reason and when there is a freak chain of events like the ones that I have just experience in the past 24 hours, I know that it is a sign. An extremely clear sign that Penny is to have this amputation so without hesitation, I whisk her off to the animal hospital. I kiss that huge beautiful paw of hers (if you have ever held a Saint Bernard paw in person you know what I am talking about) goodbye and gave it one last tickle in the sensitive spot in the center and I leave her in good hands for the night. The past day has been a whirlwind and so I take some time during the evening to find out everything I will need to know about caring for a canine amputee. Most of that information coming directly from www.tripawds.com. I get one last good night’s sleep and anxiously wait to bring Penny home.
Saturday October 15, 2011
It’s the afternoon and we can finally bring Penny home. Someone carries her to the car for us and her incision is still draining so they give us a towel for her to lay on. Upon arriving at home, I cover her with one of my husbands old shirts to soak up whatever is still draining, to cover the incision so she can’t get to it and to provide us with a handle to help support her. It takes both my husband and I to pick her up and carry her into the house. I had prepared a comfy bed for her in her favorite spot and there we laid her down. She seemed to be okay but was panting alot. This is a sign of pain but it was also a very hot day so we weren’t sure which one was causing it. We sat with her for a little bit to get her comfortable but she seemed very agitated so I gave her the prescription pain killer and sedative that was sent home but now she was whimpering and trying to get up. She was exhibiting signs of needing to go potty so we attempted to get her outside. Her legs were just not cooperating so again my husband and I decided to just carry her out. Once we got outside, she decided that the soft cool grass was just too enticing on that hot day and so she just laid there. After waiting a few minutes for her, she became even more agitated and began trying to walk on her own. She just could not keep her chest elevated so my husband came over to hold her up and as soon as her got to her, she pooped. This was a good sign. She seemed very comfortable outside in the cool grass and the air was cooling down much faster than inside the house so we made a picnic out there with her and ate our dinner on the grass with her (in case you are really grossed out right now, we had already cleaned up the poop). As it began to darken, we carried her back in the house and laid her on her comfy bed where she proceeded to stay for the next 12 hours. She would continue to pant throughout the night and seemed a little restless but through it all she was drinking lots of water and was able to eat her kibble.
Sunday October 16, 2011
Penny awakes and seems just like her old self in spirit but she does not try to move around on her own yet. Throughout the day, we make several trips outside to see if she will go potty but ultimately she winds up taking a nap in the grass. It is over 24 hours since we have brought her home and she has not peed yet. I am concerned that she will develop a bladder infection. Each time we walk her, she is getting stronger and more coordinated but I am supporting a huge portion of her weight. I doubt that I did the right thing for her. What if she never learns to walk without the leg. Maybe she should have been euthanized today after-all. Why have I put her through this suffering for my own selfishness. She isn’t a fighter. She probably wanted to go. I had originally planned to just have the leg amputated so that we could keep her alive without pain a little bit longer, but now I am putting her through something even worse. I am a horrible person who made a very stupid decision. The doctor says that amputation without chemo is useless and will do nothing to prolong her life so I did my research and found an oncologist that is not too far away. She has an appointment for next Monday the 24th. Not looking forward to finding out how much that will cost me.
Monday October 17, 2011
Oh how I wish that they could talk to us. It was another sleepless night. She layed there panting so hard and I tried everything that I could think of to calm her but nothing was working. When my husband left for work at 5am I decided to take Penny outside to see if the cooler air would help her. Penny must have been abused by her previous owners for not going to the bathroom in the correct areas because she does not like to go while I am standing nearby. Since she needs me to help hold her up still, this has proven to be a huge obstacle in getting her to go. After getting her outside I stepped into the house to grab a blanket and by the time I came out, Penny had walked (or dragged) herself a few feet away from where I had left her and was having a bowel movement, a very large one in fact. Aaha! Now I know why she was frantically panting all night. Poor thing. I wish they could talk and tell us these things.
I am very happy to see a little bit of her old self coming back out today. She hates walking on the wood floors (yes I have laid down rugs but she still finds it slippery) and so she digs in and refuses to walk and I find myself lifting and dragging her most of the way. She is a Saint Bernard and I am a gal of very small stature so this is extremely difficult. I’m seriously thinking of getting her a harness. The only time that she hopped up and was ready to bolt was when I asked her if she wanted to go for a ride. She sure was cooperative when it came to getting into the car.
I spent most of the morning researching holistic treatment options and have placed and order for K9 Immunity Plus. My life is so hectic that home cooked meals for Penny is totally out of the question so I picked up some Blue Buffalo dog food (the Salmon variety) and I will be doing more research on natural cancer finding foods that can be added to this kibble.
Overall, I’m very exhausted but it has been a pretty good day. Hopefully Penny and I will be getting some sleep tonight.
It’s common to doubt yourself so hang in. The first handful of days are the most difficult – particularly with a large breed. We also thought we were crazy when we got Sammy home – we doubted whether or not we did the amputation for us or for him. But as the days passed and he became more comfortable and confident we were sure we made the right decision. He was not ready to go yet and we needed to let him fight this thing. You’ll see, Penny will figure things out and you’ll see a spirit you never imagined was there. It’s a lot of dog on three legs so she’ll take a bit longer to do things on her own – but when she does, watch out as you’ll be amazed. Hang in! xoxo Sue and Sammy
take a breath, then another. there are many folks here on the forums that opted for amputation without chemo for OSA, you know what is best for your girl. get the information you need to make the right decision, and as long as you make your decisions with love for your penny as your guiding force, you’ll make the right decision.
as an fyi, the pain meds will often cause panting, it’s scary, and sometimes the drugs make the pups very spacy too. know that the drugs are making her do wierd stuff and she will be much more ‘your penny’ after they are out of her system. the first two weeks aren’t called ‘hell weeks’ for nothing. you’ll get through it, and penny will do fine.
charon & gayle
It makes me sad that your vet told you amp without chemo would be “useless.” Others here have done amp w/out chemo and some got a LOT of time with their dogs. Others got maybe only a few months – but if you asked them if those months were “useless” of course they would say NO, those months were wonderful, extra, pain free time with their furry family members. You are taking the pain away. These first 2-3 weeks post-amp are rough, you will be sleep deprived, your pup won’t act like herself, but once you get through it I think you’ll see your old girl come back to you and you will be so happy that you did this. Hang in there! Post on the forums when you have questions or just need some support. Oh, and you should call the vet this a.m. if she still hasn’t peed. It can take a good few days for that first poop, but peeing should be back to normal much sooner.
Jackie, Abby’s mom
I just want to send lots of hugs your way. We haven’t had to deal with cancer yet (paws crossed) but I can sympathize with seeing your baby in pain and not knowing what to do with it. My non-tripod was diagnosed with EPI, but it took 4 months for the vet to figure it out, 4 months of watching him sick and starving. I’m glad I waited for that diagnosis, and I hope things will get better for you and Penny too. Dogs are remarkably resilient, hopefully soon she’ll show you that.
Wishing a much time as possible for you and your Penny.
My Chili Dawg had OSA. We did not do chemo. While we only got 3.5 months with him, I do not regret our decision. He was pain free and happy for his remaining months, andour family cherished the time we spent with him. Amputating was the best decision we made for himand I would make that same decision again. The first 2 weeks are the “hell” weeks, but once you get through that, you will see the amazing things that Penny can do, I promise you. dogs are amazing creatures. Hang in there! Sending you hugs!
Jenna & Spirit Chili Dawg
I agree with Abby’s mom… Amputation without chemo is certainly not useless. First and foremost, it takes away the incredible PAIN from the OSA tumor. Surgery recovery can be rough, but the discomfort is no where near the pain from the tumor.
Bo lived for 3 months post-op. We did not do chemo. Surgery was a big expense. Recovery was not an easy ride. It was/is emotional. Was it worth it? ABSOLUTELY!!!
Penny just had a major surgery. She will need time to rest, heal, and adjust. Give her a couple of weeks and she will amaze you. The meds are much needed after surgery, but they can mess with our pup’s head. About the potty issue… Bo didn’t go #2 until day 5 post-amp. Make sure Penny is getting plenty of water and if she still doesn’t go, give your vet a call. You have paid them enough; you have every reason to call with questions.
Hopefully when you go back on the 24th (to get stitches out?), you won’t have to pay too much. Bo got 2 post-amp visits included with the surgery cost. After that, they charged us a “recheck” fee instead of the full exam fee.
Stay strong. I know it’s hard. Animals are very intuitive and will pick up on their human’s feelings. They will know if you have given up on them. Don’t!! The first couple of weeks are awful, but it will get better. Make sure to visit us in the forums if you have any post-amp questions. Keep us posted!!
I also agree with everyone above with regards to amputation and no chemo. A lot of pawrents opt for this, so please don’t second guess yourself.
The first couple of weeks are hellish. I know it might not seem like it right now, but you got rid of the pain – the pain of OSA. A lot of the panting and if she is whining at all can definitely be the pain meds. Is she on Tramadol? That is a common painkiller the vets give for amp surgery. It is an opiate and can cause them not to pee for a while. We had the same problem. We took him on the 30 minute drive to the vets twice because we were worried he wasn’t peeing. But at least being outside at the vets with all the smells made him pee ;0) But you should definitely still call the vet if she has not peed.
We got the ruffwear harness with the handle in back and love it. It allows us just to give him a little help when he needs it.
The doubts are common, and the what-ifs will drive you mad. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, just like Penny. You made the best choice for you and your dog and your family. I know it is hard, but don’t second guess yourself. You are in good company here on tripawds. The forums are a great place to do research and post questions.
Love her up for all of us!
Nancy and the Golden Goofs