We apologize for our silence.
We are still trying to make sense of it all.
We are confused, upset, lost.
On 2/28, we found a couple of lumps in our dog, Lola’s groin. She was acting mostly herself, eating, drinking, peeing, and pooping. She still showed her affection and showered us with love. But we were concerned.
The next day, we called the vet and they got her in on Tuesday. After complete blood panel, urinalysis, and a fine-needle aspiration of the lumps, they did not know what it was.
But we had the gut feeling that something was wrong.
Fast forward to next week, she got a complete abdominal ultrasound, more fine-needle aspiration, and chemistry that showed elevated calcium… the word we did not want to hear was heard- lymphoma.
How can my sweet 4 years old baby have cancer? How long has she been dealing with the pain, the discomfort, the desire to just stay at home and not be bothered?
The vet told us to start looking for an oncologist for further treatment. Mind you, in human, lymphoma is scary but we personally know several people who have survived it. But as we start to do our own research, the prognosis is AWFUL.
Lymphoma is never cured in dogs. Chemotherapy will put it in remission. Without chemotherapy, the survival time is 1-2 months. With chemotherapy, the survival time maybe 6 months to 1 year.
The internet told us that we only have another year, if even, with our girl?
But that’s if we can even find an oncologist.
In the Chicagoland area, all the oncologists were booked out for another month. WE DON’T HAVE ANOTHER MONTH WITH HER! She won’t live another month. We called and called so many places, we were ready to take her to Indiana, Wisconsin, wherever they’ll take her because we simply cannot accept that she’ll die before she gets treatment.
Finally, we found a hospital that is an hour from the city that had an opening a couple of days after we found out the vet is HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS of lymphoma.
The next day, we received her cytology- confirmed lymphoma diagnosis.
So here we are, our silence because we are grieving. Because we still cannot understand how our perfect girl has cancer.
Then we found out she has T-cell lymphoma which is the more aggressive phenotype, putting her survival time to 6 months.
We are sad. We are upset. We are lost.
We cannot imagine our life without her.
We just want her to be happy, comfortable, and enjoy every moment of the rest of her life.
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