My ten-year Susie presented with a limp back in early October. Another family member was outside with her and she ran around the shed in the backyard--when she came back, she was limping.

We (and our local vet) thought she'd stepped on something in the backyard and cut her paw and then it had gotten infected, or that she still had a foreign body in the paw pad. (The vet tried cutting it out with a scissors at one point, but couldn't find anything.) Through the next few months, Susie was treated with four different oral antibiotics (one of them so strong that I had to wear rubber gloves in order to handle the pills so I didn't get aplastic anemia), plus an antibiotic ointment. (Susie had to wear a little sock on the affected paw all the time, so she didn't lick the paw and also so the ointment would stay on.)

So, three months and five antibiotics (counting the topical one) later, Susie was still limping and in pain (even crying and whimpering in her sleep), and the paw pad area had ulcerated and gotten much redder and bigger. I had been taking her in to see our local vet every single week since early October, and it was now late December! I asked the vet to do a culture to see what antibiotic the "infection" might respond to, so under general anesthesia, the local vet did the culture and the first biopsy. Susie was due for a dental cleaning, so the tech did that, too, and also pulled one of her teeth. While she was under anesthesia, they also probed once more for a foreign body, but again, didn't find one.

After the biopsy, she had to wear a splint for several days, but it rubbed pressure sores on her leg and she was in even more pain.

The culture came back first, and showed which antibiotic would work best for her infection (at this point, she apparently DID also have an infection or two), so we got yet another antibiotic to give her, but we were told that it would finally heal her, so everyone was relieved and happy.

Then, just a few days later, the biopsy came back (I had completely forgotten they'd even done a biopsy, and the vet said she felt as if she were robbing us by even doing it, as the prospect of that type of cancer was so rare that she'd only seen one other case in all her 30+ years of being a vet). I had an appointment for Susie that day, anyway (my twelfth in about as many weeks), and I'll never forget the look on the vet's face as she ushered us in. Blissfully unaware, I was joking around about how Susie resisted going into the vet's office, as she'd had so many bad experiences there over the past three months. I remember telling the vet, "I love you, Dr. ___, but I wish I didn't have to see you so much!" But neither the vet nor her tech cracked a smile. Instead, the vet told me, "The biopsy came back this morning. She has eccrine adenocarcinoma, a really nasty and severely aggressive form of cancer. The best case scenario is that her leg would be amputated, and even then the cancer could metastasize to her lungs or lymph nodes. She's an older dog, so you might want to think about euthanasia."

She had her surgery on Wednesday, and the supervising surgeon told me she was a "rock star" and didn't need any blood transfusions. The next day she was in Intensive Care, but we were still able to see her for fifteen minutes at a time twice that day. The bad news was that her IV blocked up almost immediately after surgery, so she was no longer able to get fentanyl and fluids by continuous infusion. They tried one of the rear legs, and the vein collapsed. (Both legs are still very bruised and swollen.) She has been on oral codeine and Meloxidyl ever since the IV catheter got blocked after surgery, but they only want her on pain meds for the week immediately following surgery, so that means tomorrow is her last day. That kind of scares me, as I can tell she's still in pain, and she is also experiencing phantom limb pain. They are worried about the side effects of long-term use of the Meloxidyl, as she's been on it since October, and actually wanted her off it as of today.

I asked the veterinary student about the inflatable donut e-collars, and she told me the one she bought for her own dog popped! We bought a less hard e-Collar while Susie was still in the hospital and showed it to the veterinary student, but she thought it might be too flimsy. So we had to take it back to the pet store in the area.

And is there anyone else out there whose dog was diagnosed with eccrine adenocarcinoma or is Susie the only tripawd with it in this group?