Tiger Has a Bone Tumor

Tiger got worse over the weekend. Just when I thought it was as bad as it could get. Note to self - it can always get worse.

Sunday morning, we woke up to Tiger's ankle and foot extremely swollen. It's the same leg that he's been favoring and the hip with arthritis. Initially I thought it was a symptom of the new medication Tiger is on, but I couldn't confirm since the vet doesn't work Sundays. He wasn't available on Monday either since it was a holiday. So we just waited it out and took Tiger to the vet today.

Tiger was in a lot of pain this weekend. He just laid around and moved as little as possible. He's not eating well either. Sometimes he just cries when he's laying there. It breaks my heart.

I was in a lot of pain this weekend, too. I haven't cried this much in ages. Seeing my dog like this and thinking about life without him makes me overwhelmingly sad. It definitely made for a poor holiday weekend. I did my best to distract myself though there was very little I could do for Tiger except try to comfort him.

Finally we went to the vet, Dr. M, this morning. Naturally, Dr. M was very surprised to see Tiger with such a swollen leg. Though, Tiger did have some bruising on the inside of his leg on Friday when I took him in. At that time, neither the vet nor I could explain the bruises. Right now, the whole inside of Tiger's leg is bruised. Dr. M immediately took him off to take more x-rays.

The x-rays of Tiger's lower leg show that he's got a tumor on his ankle. We didn't catch this before because we were focusing on Tiger's hips. Now that he sees this, Dr. M believes this is the true reason for Tiger's pain and that the arthritis is simply a secondary issue. It explains why the previous medicines weren't really helping with the pain.

Tiger has bone tumors, which is probably osteosarcoma because it's the most common kind. It's very aggressive cancer and is common in the limbs of large breed dogs. Basically, I have two choices in which to deal with this. 1)Euthanize Tiger so he will no longer be in pain. 2)Amputate the leg to give Tiger a little more time without pain. I asked a few questions about both options as I fought back tears. It wasn't a decision that I could make in the vet's office so he gave me some pain medication for Tiger and we went home.

From the start, I've been leaning towards amputation. Tiger simply isn't all that sick. Besides the leg pain, he's been a completely normal dog. He still eats normally (just significantly less in the past week which I suspect is due to the pain) and can make it outside to go to the bathroom. He's been getting around fairly well on only three legs. He drags the hurt leg behind him and I know he could get around a lot better without it in the way. To me, it makes sense to remove the pain. Because there is hope that Tiger can live a normal life again without the leg, I've chosen to have it amputated. Tiger goes in for surgery on Thursday and will get to come home on Saturday.

The biggest concern about the surgery is that Tiger may not come out of the anesthesia. The first thing that causes concern for this is he's old. Older dogs don't do as well. I'm hopeful this is not the case for him because he had mild anesthesia on Friday and he came out of it just fine. The second thing is Tiger has a tumor in his chest. It's about the size of a golf ball and it's near the heart. Before doing any surgery it's common for vets to x-ray the chest to see if the cancer has spread. Dr. M said he didn't know what the tumor is and that it may or may not be cancer. He said he usually sees cancer in the lungs spread out in small bits. This was definitely one large mass. It may cause a complication to the surgery or it may simply mean that Tiger doesn't have that much longer to live.

I've decided that even if Tiger only has a couple more days without pain, amputation is the right thing for me to do. If Tiger doesn't come out of surgery then it's simply his time, but at least I didn't give up on him.

On Saturday, I was getting really depressed that I hadn't seen Tiger wag his tail in a couple of days. That's when I knew things were really bad. Tiger has shown such immense happiness even in the darkest of situations. (Like the time I slammed his tail shut in the door over four years ago. He came inside the house and wagged his tail to show me that things were OK. What he didn't realize was that he also wagged blood all over Mom and Dad's cream carpet!) I told myself that I really just wanted to see him wag his tail in happiness one more time before his life was over. Luckily, I was blessed to see that happen on Sunday. I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk and he did. He hobbled over to the door and wagged his tail as I put on his collar. He has always loved those walks and even in all the pain he's in, he still wants to go. Since I got to see that one last time, I feel that whatever happens with the surgery will be OK. None of this is easy, but I do have peace in the fact that Tiger and I have shared a lot of happiness together.

Comments