I'm just so happy it's something I can immediately treat without surgery!!

Athla is excited because we bought her celebration steak and shake.

Oh my god, what a couple of weeks.

Still camped out on the floor with her - she would have a good day, a great day, and then cry and not move for a day. No matter how much we rested her, it still kept happening. Sunday was particularly bad.

So we took her in yesterday and were there for THREE HOURS while they did a gazillion tests. Her oncologist was afraid she might have tumors in her spine after all.

But after xrays, they concluded -

She's just an old lady with arthritis.

Which, really is the best possible outcome of all of this. We're so happy.

They've started her on Amantadine - so that, rimadyl (upped that), gabapentin, the metronomic chemo, a multivitamin every other day, artemesenin... not to mention the slew of drugs we have but never used - this dog is starting her own pharmacy!!!

But hopefully we can get her feeling better again. I gave her the amantadine last night and this morning she woke me up, drug me outside, pooped FOUR times, ran back in, demanded breakfast! So hungry! She seemed in great spirits 🙂

(her at the vet yesterday)

I knew it.

I knew it a month ago - I knew it on Monday when they told us it was just arthritis and I knew it at 11:18pm today when my girl was crying, sobbing, suffering in my lap.

I called Blake and told him this was bad - she wasn't ok. He said, "Laura this isn't lung cancer! She'll be fine!"

And I said, "No. No this is the thing that will take her from us."

During xrays Monday, while the bones look fine there's a large circle in the abdominal cavity the drs thought was her bladder. It's not.

It's the size of a melon. It's osteo, but it went to the soft tissues instead of her lungs. Nobody even thought to look there. But, that's in the past, and we did everything we could.

I'm not going to operate. I'm not going radiate. We're going to give the max we can in painkillers and we are going to rent a cabin next weekend and I am going to give her all the foods with sugar I stopped giving her and I'm going to make her chili and curry and banana smoothies and we are going to cuddle and I am going to remind her every minute of time she has left that she is so, so loved and that I have never BEEN loved like she's loved me.

And then I will hire a woman to come to my house and we will let her go.

This is so hard.