Hello everyone,

this is our story of a misdiagnosis on our 11 year old female great dane.
Our great dane started limping heavily on her front left paw… after a few days, we saw this wasn't getting any better so we took her to the vet. We always worry when she shows signs of pain because she's the type of dog that never shows she's in pain. The vet decided to take pictures of her leg to see what was going on, then came the horrible news! Our dog had bone cancer and that we had to prepare ourselves to make a very tough decision! The 2 options our vet proposed was to amputate her leg or give her pain killers until we decide to let her go.

Our world just crushed down! We just felt so helpless and felt so sad that she would have to go this way. My partner's brother died of this condition, so he knew what this entails. The vet told us to anyway go to a specialist/vet surgeon to show him the pictures, so that he can help us take the right decison for her. We had to wait 5 days for our appointment. Five days of hell, crying every day, spoiling her rotten, googling about the condition, reading up on forums, reading all the testimonials of the Tripawd community. We came up with the decision that we would give our pooch all the chances she could get, even if it means the risk of an invasive expensive operation to amputate. We just felt she was not ready to go.

Then came the appointment with the specialist. He took a look at our dog, looked at the pictures then asked us, "So? What seems to be the problem with your dog?", we told him that the vet who refered us to him told us it was bone cancer and we showed him the area on the pictures. He went "Oh that?? No, I don't think so. It looks more like some sort of calcification of the ligaments between the 2 bones."
A huge weight went off our shoulders! I had mixed feelings of wanting to punch the previous vet for the misdiagnosing and all the anguish, and hugging the present vet. It felt like a second miraculous chance was given to us.

Ligament calcification isn't dangerous to her life and the pain can easily be controlled. Right now she recovered after taking a course of pain killers. The vet did say we should still take a picture of her leg a month later, just to be sure and to see if there are any changes. But nothing changed, and the vet confirmed his earlier diagnosis.

I always told our pooch that she still had a contract running for another 5 years to stay with us. So she is well on her way to follow it through!

By this I do not want to raise too many people's hopes because what are the odds of this happening… but all I can say is to get other vets' opinion before taking any decision, they will help & guide you to towards taking the 'right' decision. Vets are human and they all do mistakes at one point or another. At least these 5 hellish days made us be more aware that our 'puppy' won't be with us forever, and that we should cherish everyday we've got together, and if we had to take a tough decision at one point, we already thought through to what extend we would go to help her live and die.

Big hugs to all present and future brave tripawd pooches.

This is beyond fantastic! I'm so happy for you guys. I remember after Fortis' amputation while waiting for the biopsy results to return I was still hoping praying that maybe the vets were wrong and it was a fungal bone infection or something. Granted, I would have felt horrible for taking Fortis' leg unnecessarily but it would have beat the heck out of cancer.

Thanks for sharing this wonderful news. One less dog that must suffer from this hated disease is a prayer answered in my book.

That's wonderful news about your Great Dane!  What's her name by the way?

Angel Jake and Wolfie's Mom

I think as  much as we love our dogs everyone on tripawds is happy when another dog doesn't have to join our group.  Congratulations on the misdiagnosis!  It is always good to get a second opinion when facing a cancer diagnosis for our dogs or for our people.  Doctors do their best but medicene is not an exact science.  If you get two different diagnosis though I would go for three opinions before making a decision.

Debra & Angel Emily

Thanks for all you kind words… to get to know me and my pooch Eoline, you can check out my blog, she is often the topic of my posts

http://frostbite.be/