BillsFan4 Posted December 30, 2017 Posted December 30, 2017 On 12/14/2017 at 6:43 PM, BillsEnthusiast said: Just got back home. Ultrasound revealed a sizable tumor in his abdomen - stomach cancer. Untreatable even if I had the cash for chemo and surgery. Bear's been given 3 weeks, enough for Christmas. Holy living ****. I'm a little in shock. Sweats, I'm going to keep that in mind when the inevitable comes. Thanks. So sorry to hear this. I just recently went through something similar similar with my dog. They prescribed a steroid pill for him that actually bought him some extra time and got him eating + drinking again. He was a pure bred Alaskan Malamute. I found a lump growing on his leg and it ended up being cancer. We had it removed and it came back. So they gave us the choice of letting it go, chemo or amputation of the leg+ shoulder. They said amputation was the best bet. So we had it done. The doctor checked him for cancer elsewhere in his body before the surgery and during the operation itself. He said if it had spread there'd be no point in the surgery. Well, he said he didn't find any cancer so he removed the front leg/shoulder. The recovery was terrible. It was a massive surgery and the wound was big. As I'm sure you know, keeping a dog clean isn't an easy task. Let along a very big dog who was just trying to learn to walk without his front leg... Well, despite my absolute best efforts it ended up infected (which the vet said was a highly likely possibility). The after care was crazy expensive. We had to take him to have this wound cleaned every day for weeks. It was horrible but he got better. So finally he's all healed and is starting to learn to walk well again. It's a lot harder for a dog to lose a front leg than a rear leg I guess, and even harder for big dogs. I had to buy a special harness for him and help him up and down the stairs and stuff like that. Even had to help him go to the bathroom for a while. He was a relatively quick learner though, and was able to overcome it after a few months. He was able to use the stairs on his own again and all that stuff. Was even able to run again. Honestly, it was inspiring to see how this dog overcame losing his leg, and how it never changed his happy go lucky, easy going personality one bit. Got his 1 year check up and all was good. He still looked cancer free. Well, shortly after that, out of nowhere, he stopped eating and was acting lethargic. We took him to the vet and they had to do all sorts of scans on him. We had to leave him because he had to be sedated. So we had to wait a while for the results. It was torture. The news wasn't good. They said his whole chest and stomach area was filled with tumors. Nothing they could do. They gave him Prednisone pills (it's a steroid). I guess it helped the swelling and pressure from the tumors of something like that. It actually really helped initially. He began eating again and had a little more energy. I think it at least made him a bit more comfortable. We had had him put down a few months after finding out. It was really tough. Thrn had to have my other dog put down maybe 6-8 months later. She at least went from old age though. My Malamute was still young. Just figured id share my story with you. Sorry again about your dog. They really do become like family.
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