Hi lovelies! It's Christine again, I am Tori's Mum. As much as I love Tripawds, it's been such a blessing, I confess that I don't go on the forums much anymore unless I'm specifically looking for something. It's just that I am already an over-thinker, so reading about doggos that are further on the journey is just too much info for me at the moment. After Tori's last round of chemo and her first scan showing no sign of osteo, we've been gloriously basking in life without thinking about the C word every five minutes.

It's been nice while it lasted, but we have reached our next hurdle. I appreciate every situation is different so it's risky to compare dogs, but we can't get into the specialist until Tuesday afternoon, so it would help me just to gauge what possible scenarios we might face, so I can mentally prepare myself a bit more.

So Tori has been going great guns, and life is good. She is one happy girl. Which makes us happy!

About 3 weeks ago, she got two small hard lumps, one on her neck and one on her leg. They started off the size of a pea, but that one of her neck is almost golf ball sized now. We got her to our vets last week and we just got the results back that it's a sarcoma. They can't say it was osteo yet but they said it would be really unusual for to have 2 different sarcomas. But when they took the biopsy, they could get needles into it (so not bony) and they don't seem tender at all, so that was leaning them away from osteo. 

To be honest I was just thinking they were going to be cysts (as she has boxer in her and is white, so she is always prone to lumps and bumps). I thought surely cancer wouldn't go from not visible on a scan to almost golf size in less than a month?

So now that my denial bubble has been somewhat popped, I just wondered if someone could explain the likely journey for most of our puppers from no cancer to lung mets - how quickly does it progress, do they have medical options to slow thing down, does the pain kick in straight away or near the end? I just don't want her to be a zombie or feeling horrible to extend her life. 

Apologies if this is triggering for those who have lost your babies, and also those earlier on in the journey. I just realised I knew what to expect when we were smashing the cancer, and the pointy end being lung mets, but I'm not sure about what's in the middle. Obviously we will know more next week, but I was just hoping for some anecdotes so I can get a vibe for what's the best case and worst case scenario.

Fingers crossed it is another sarcoma (although I'm not sure if that makes the news any better).

Thanks so much, you are a godsend. I will send more pics when I am not so sad. We are going away for a long weekend to dog friendly accommodation by the water, so I'm going to leave my worries at home and just enjoy those precious moments with her. At least she is still happy and I can't see any pain - the CBD oil is all I'm giving her at the moment - she's just more tired than usual (but it's hot here so hard to tell what the driver is).

Christine