I was asked to start a new topic with more details, and I also want to send a special shout out to Xanderdane and Malachi (and Josh) who are just a couple of days behind Ajax in this process ...

ALL GOOD NEWS ON OUR FRONT!  Ajax's recovery has confirmed that amputation was absolutely the right decision, though if you search back you will see that we had a very hard time with the decision and gave serious consideration to doing radiation in the hopes of giving him a couple more years on 4 legs.

History:  Ajax was diagnosed with chondrosarcoma in his rear leg in mid May.  The prognosis was good (take tumor out, do some radiation) until we did the CT scan which a) showed the only surgical option that would get sufficient margins was amputation, due to the location of the tumor near the knee; and b) showed "spots" that were probably benign, and another tumor that was probably benign, in the chest.  As the chondrosarcoma in the leg was diagnosed from an excisional biopsy at "stage 1" the recommendation was to wait a month and do another CT to make sure the spots in the chest were not mets.

One month CT clear, no mets, benign tumor (thymoma) in chest taken out and confirmed benign.

Amputation:  Surgery was last Monday, so we are now 9 DAYS POST AMP AND DOING GREAT.  We haven't needed a sling or anything, nor have we given him any tramadol after the fentanyl patches came off.  One of the residents (he was operated on at a teaching hospital) gave us this great trick for taking off the fentanyl patches - she said rub a Qtip with rubbing alcohol around the edges - we did this and they came right off, Ajax didn't even notice.

He zooms everywhere, but we had a couple of wipeouts on slippery floors in the beginning.  My advice is cover the floors because fewer wipeouts means he'll build confidence faster.  See Home Depot suggestions posted on one of my other topics.

I'm still working on the running everywhere issues, I'll let folks know how that goes.  Meanwhile, we've all been sleeping on the floor together.  Mom's neck is getting a little tired of this, so Mom and Dad together put Ajax up on the bed last night (his preferred spot) but quickly decided that it was too soon.  The big circle he needs to take now to do his 3 circles before settling makes Mom feel like he's going to fall off the bed, though Ajax would clearly solve that problem by pushing Mom off the bed instead ... either way, we're hanging on the floor for a few more days.

We went out across the street yesterday for a while, and sat on a bench by the small park around the Museum of Natural History so he could watch people go by.  He was tired, but happy.  City dog needs stimulation!

Ajax has always been a very good example of the principle of conservation of energy, so we are not having too much trouble containing him.  He seems to know he's a little tired, and he's good to go out and chase a little puppy tail, but he's pretty much willing to rest. 

Last night we got back the pathology reports from the leg which was amputated.  Short version:  all good.

Long version (in case it will help anyone know what questions to ask):

- tumor confirmed to be chondrosarcoma as original biopsy showed

- although it was not specifically staged, they agree that the tumor is grade 1

- no sign of necrosis in surrounding tissue (this means that the cancer did not eat up more tissue around the tumor, which means less spreading and less chance of an invisible metastasis somewhere)

- tumor characterized as "differentiated" (again, this is predictor of metastasis - "differentiated" is good, means less chance of spread)

- under microscopic examination, mitotic index was determined to be less than 1  - this is very good, very low chance of any mets.  (the pre-surgery biopsy had it at 3; the vets tell us that any result less than 10 is good)

- pathology showed no lymph node involvement

Sorry for the long post!  Thanks everyone for your support.  I'll keep posting until the 2 week period as we recover ....