Corn's foot problem started about 3 yrs ago when he got a small cut on his back leg when he slipped on a wet deck. We took him to vet after vet trying to get this wound to heal. Nothing seemed to help, antibiotics, foot soaks, sprays, scrappings, different antibiotics, etc.

All the vets seem to think that his licking at it was why it wouldn't heal and it had become like a comfort thing for him or like a bad habit, like a kid sucking his thumb. They told us not to cover it,  but to not let him lick it.

 After 2 yrs of this, I finally, this past summer, decided that I was taking matters into my own hands and I was going to cover it with gauze, which I changed every day. Took a few weeks but it worked and it finally healed up and he seemed to be leaving it alone. A month or so later didn't he come running up that slippery deck again and wiped out really bad. He had trouble getting up and now he was limping. Off to the vets again. Little did we know the emotional roller coaster ride we were getting on.

Vet took xrays and thought it was his  hip that was the problem. He recommended that we send his radiograph's to a  radiologist as he didn't like the look of the (left) hip area. OK, so off they went, said we should hear back in a few days and  put Corn on pain meds.  We were on our second pack of 10 pills when we finally got the call with the results, good news was the hip was fine, bad news was they noticed something on the lower back ( right) leg area and diagnosis was Osteosarcoma. What's that? I asked, " a very fast aggresive systemic cancer!!" he said. But it's his left leg that he's  limping on?  I don't remember what else he said  during that phone call as it just devistated me.

 We live in a really small town so the vet recommended we take Corn to the nearest Vet Teaching University to see an Oncologist. He said time was of the essenence and got us an appointment for the next week and off we went, a 4 hr. drive away. I hardly slept while waiting for the appointment day to come, I read everything I could about Osteosarcoma and had lost all hope by the time we finally saw the Oncologist.

They re-radiographed the LEFT leg, (seems that was just a typo), and said a biopsy should be done right away because of his history of the open wound, they couldn't tell from the xrays if it was osteosarcoma or osteomylitis (an infection). We agreed to the biopsy and went out to the car to sit and wait and cry. In the 6 hours or more that we waited we got 3 -4 calls from the student in charge of Corn, " Did we want the opthomologist to take a look at Corn's eyes, since we're here anyway and he's in the building and has time,  since we told them in  his history of Corn's  Panas? Then, another call, did we want the dermotologist to look at his itchy feet that he's been licking, site of the old wound, it's possible he has allergies. Next call,  did we want them to radiograph the right leg just incase it wasnt' a typo? There was another call I dont' remember what it was about. My husband and I started to wonder what is this all about?  We are here to find out if our dog has cancer, does it really matter if his feet are itchy, or he's going blind from panus.

We got a hotel room and stayed overnight and picked him up the next evening after the biopsy and were told we would hear in a few days the results. He now had a cast on as they did the more aggresive biopsy, not just the needle type and they wanted to protect the leg from a pathalogical fracture.  We waited and waited and I called and called and finally a week later we got a call from the surgeon that the results of the biop was inconclussive and she suggested we wait a month and bring him back for more xrays. She matter of factly told me that regardless of the results the outcome would be the same, amputation. If they removed the leg then they could look at it better and know for sure what it was.  The following day the Oncologist called to say that she had just gone over the biop results with the pathologist and she didn't like what she saw in the results, something didn't seem right to her and she was going to speak with another pathologist and see if  they had any biopsy left to take another slice and look at it again. ??OK. She said she was going out of town for a month but she would turn it over to another Ongologist and we should hear something by the end of that week. OK. A week went bye and I called and called, nothing. I finally had to call my local vet and have him call to get the second results. He got right thru to them and called back shortly to say it sounded good, they had taken another slice, there was no cancerous cells and nothing in the lungs either. All good news.

Went back in a month, re radiographed leg and lungs and still not sure if it's Osteo or Osteomylitis. This had to be the worst experience of all, she pulled up the xrays to show us that they had seen a bit more bone loss, and she recommends immediate amputation, as time is of the essence she feels, but she's pointing to the front of the leg and the biopsy was done in the back. When we asked about the second slice results, she told us no they had not done another slice just had a different pathologist look at the first one. Totally different info from what they had told our local vet when he call. The most upsetting thing was her cell phone kept going off every 30 seconds, she would look down at it, turn off the ringer, then continue explaining, it would ring again, she'd look down, turn off the ringer..... this went on for the whole 5 minutes of her time that she gave us. She said they could book the amputation surgery for the next day, we could leave him there and go home as he'd need to stay for 3-4 days. Between the cell calls she again explained that amputation would be the best way to get the answer to what this was. They just cut the leg off then the pathology lab can diagnose this betterand then they'll know what they are treating. WHAT!! We said NO, we were not prepared to do that at this time and asked if there was not some other test or something they could do. She said yes lets do a bone restoring drip, I forget the name of the drug, it's like Beneva for human women, our local vet could get the drug and do it in his office. We said OK, and we left.

After a few days I calmed down and spoke with our local vet. He's a great guy and spoke with me for over 2 hours on the phone. He recommended that perhaps we should write a letter to the Dean of the University. He went to school at this University and he felt embarressed at how we had been treated. We slept on it for a few more days, and we decided that we had to put our personal feelings of how they had treated us aside. Everyone kept telling us that they were some of the best Ongologist. Later that week I was at our local vets having Corn's cast changed again, we had to do this weekly, when just by chance in the middle of this appointment the first Oncologist called to speak with our vet about Corn. She was back in town and was calling to talk about the drug drip we had been told about. When I got home from the cast change I decided to call her and let her know how I felt about her ongologists, as she's the department head. She appologized for the cell phone interuptions and asked us to reconsider and bring Corn back to see another one of their ongologist. By this time my husband and I and our local vet were all convinced this was not Osteosarcoma as so many months had gone by and he was eating and doing really great, other that having this stupid cast on. We have by now spent thousands of dollars and the thought of starting all over again with a new University was to much to even consider. I forgot to mention Corn is an 8yr old Greyhound, so I got in touch with Dr.Couto and had all of his test, xrays etc. send to him for another opinion. He felt that amputation was the answer as well. It was finally the weather that decided for us. We were going to make the long journey to Dr. Couto instead of going back to the closer University, but were unable to as it was now snowing too badly to make the long trip.

Corn went thru another set of radiographs, a bone scan, made it thru the 24 hours of isolation and because of a glitch in that test had to have an ultrasound on his liver as well as a needle aspiration of his liver.  Two weeks ago today they amputated his back left leg, he came thru the operation really well, other than chewing  thru the electrical cord of his pain pump, but did not get hurt!!! Then proceeded to get his e collar off and rip it to shreads.

 The last oncologist that we met with,  brought in the human resources head of the university to ask about our bad experience there and is one of the nices vets we have ever met. He came in on his day off to meet with us before Corn was released. He then called a few days later to tell us the best news of all of this nightmare, Corn does not have Osteosarcoma, he had Fibrosarcoma and they feel they got a large enough margain that no other treatment like chemo or radiation is necessary. He recommends we have Corns lungs xrayed (at our local vet's ) and sent to him every 3 months for the next 2 years and then we can safely say he's CURED!!

We go this week to have his stitches removed and hopefully never have to make that 4 hr. drive up there ever again.

We've had Cornelius and his sister since they were 12 weeks old, rescued from a box outside of a Petco, an oops litter that a breeder had no use for. He nearly died from Parvo at 12 weeks. He's been thru a lot in the past 6 months, he loves on everyone he meets and deserved every penny, tear and emotion that we have given him thru all of this. Thanks for listening, writing this has helped me a lot. My heart goes out to everyone here that didn't get that phone call that I got last week.