Oh Blackdog, you are SO not a turd! You're a pawesome pawrent for even asking those questions! Do you know how many people wouldn't even get that far? So give yourself a pat on the back and know that you are doing everything right. We applaud you!

Welcome to Tripawds. We're hoppy to have you. I'll try to answer your questions and give you some of our perspective:

Cost concerns

We hate to even factor money into all this, but that's reality. It's OK to ask, and it's OK to minimize the hit on the wallet. My Mom's a proud tightwad, she understands the dilemma, totally. Something that might interest you is a recent forum post, where we asked people what they paid, just for amptuation. Check it out to give you an idea:  Costs of Amputation and Chemotherapy: What Did You Pay?

While getting an exact diagnosis and grading of the cancer ("staging") through biopsies and lymph node testing is important to determine prosnisis and treatments, if you aren't going the chemo route, then you might want to save yourself the expense of the additional biopsy. In my case, I just had one test that confirmed I had osteosarcoma, then I had the amputation. My parents didn't do anything further because we weren't doing IV chemo.

One of our favorite dog vets, Dr. Demian Dressler, says in his Dog Cancer Survival Guide e-book,

"One of the tricky things about staging is that there can be cancer spread that is actually not picked up by any of these tests. There is a phenomenon called micrometastasis, which is the spread of cancerous cells through the ciruclation into other body areas. These cells have not yet multiplied enough to make large tumors that can be detected by tests. Since cells are so tiny, these cancerous cells are often totally invisible to our medical instruments. Micrometastasis can make cancer treatment much more difficult, because when things are undetectable we can't deal with them."

So that's something else to consider. Even tests may not see the cancer that is really there. Lots of people here have experienced that.

Don't beat yourself up if you're not doing chemo. I didn't do IV chemo, and I went 17 months until I had mets, then lived another 7 months when I tried an oral, at-home chemo method. Other dogs do chemo and outlive their prognosis, and some do chemo and don't make it more than 3 months. Cancer is such a huge guessing game sometimes it can make you nuts, you never really know for sure what your chances are. All of the prognoses out there are really just guesses. They cannot tell you exactly what will happen with your unique, special girl. All any of us can do is hope and pray that we kick its butt and live long healthy lives despite it.

The first thing you need to remember is there are no "right" or "wrong" answers when it comes to cancer. What matter is preserving Annie's quality of life, which means making the best decision for the both of you that will cause your pack the least amount of stress.

Family Vet versus Specialist

Having a surgery done by a board-certified specialist is the gold standard of veterinary care. While family vets can certainly do amputations, they may not have the most modern equipment or staff available to monitor dogs 24/7. We read about this in the book, "Vet Confidential."

There is nothing wrong with asking your family vet: do you have 24/7 monitoring? If not, do you work with a critical care facility? What kind of anesthesia are you using? What kind of pain management procedures do you use? And look around the practice; are modern, asceptic surgical techniques being used (i.e., scrubs, surgical clothing, sterile gloves and gowns).

Not all of us have a specialist do our amputations. However, I will be honest and say that we have had a few dogs here who have contracted infections, possibly due to unsterile conditions. Also, a couple have even died while staying overnight in facilities without overnight monitoring of patients. Still, even dogs who have been at the best hospitals have had complications. My feeling is that the risk of complicatioins is greater when the facility is lacking in basic modern techniques. Family practice doctors for humans and vets can be awesome, I'm not saying they're not. My own parents had a family practice doc for themselves that saved them tons of money on simple procedures that specialists would've charged them much more for. All I'm saying is that you should consider what your family friend's facility is like before you make the decision.

I know this is a lot to take in when you have so much on your mind. But if you can get through this first hurdle, you can get through anything.

You're asking some GREAT questions here, and we thank you for that. Let us know how else we can help OK? Good luck, and keep us posted.

hugapitbull said:

We've had great success and are happy we made the choices we made.

In case you didn't see this Blackdog, Trouble just celebrated her 15 month ampuversary this week! Totally pawesome!