The Expected Bad News Arrives

Metastatic cancer is not a good look for Tuffy.

Since we never heard back from the doggie oncologist with the biopsy results for Tuffy, I finally called today to follow up. It turned out that while she was on vacation, the test results came back and were accidentally filed away rather than given to her to see when she got back. I figured it was probably something like that.

Yes, Tuffy's swollen neck is cancer, her squamous cell carcinoma metastasized to her lymph nodes. There are no reasonable treatment options for fixing this - we could spend thousands more dollars but it probably wouldn't help much.

I let Dr K know that we weren't going to try any further dramatic and expensive treatments, and she came up with one other thing to try. There's a drug she mentioned once before. It's very good for cancer-related pain, and has mild carcinoma-fighting properties, i.e. it may slow things down a little. She didn't give a time frame, but I'm guessing we can buy Tuffy a few more months of acceptable quality of life, with a $30 a month prescription from the compounding pharmacy near the "dinosaur McDonald's" at Grant and Tanque Verde. First she needs to go off the prednisone, so that is what we'll do.

Bummer.

Karen