Colin is still sick at this point but his family is starting to feel better. I ended up going to the doctor because I was hoping to get a quick Z-pac for my sore throat and to ward off any further sickness coming my way.
Stress really screws me up, as it does everyone else. I have zero appetite at this point. I've lost 10 lbs from basically forgetting to eat (don't worry, I have plenty of fat to feed my body -HAHA). I am starting to lose my hair at a rapid pace, which always happens when I get stressed and I still have this weird pain in my side. Colin is home puking his brains out so I just wanted to get into the doctor and head home. My doctor told me to go straight to the Emergency Room because she thought I had appendicitis because I will admit, I did have most of the symptoms of it. I stared at her and thought "Do you have any idea what I have going on right now? There is no way I am going to the ER".
So, I left without a Z-pac, telling her I'd head to the ER but came straight home to take care of Colin. Honestly, I had this pain for weeks now and I knew it was stress related. Appendicitis gets really bad within 24-48 hours so I knew that wasn't it. At this point, I didn't even care bc I had a husband that was getting dehydrated from hours of puking and a dog that needed to go out every 15 minutes. My family needed me more than I needed this stupid pain to just go away. I think God knew how desperate I was to feel better bc He knew I wasn't going to go to the hospital bc the very next day.... no more side pain.
Colin finally turned the corner and started feeling better a few days later and we were coming close to Max's surgery on 7/3. It made us really nervous to be bringing him home the same day as his surgery bc this is a major surgery. This isn't just a simple biospy. The doctor was going to try and get a good sample for the pathologist but he was ALSO going to try and get a large enough sample so that an immunotherapy vaccine (Torigen) could be made from it.
With all of the research I had done, immunotherapy is a ground breaking new treatment still in the experimental phase for canines. They are seeing good results from it though, and when coupled with other traditional treatments, they are seeing success.
Max's doctor mentioned immunotherapy and we enthusiastically said YES! I researched the company he was going to use and was pleased to see their results using this type of therapy with prostatic cancers in rodent studies. More to come on Torigen in a later blog post.
Back to his surgery..... The doctor called us the night before his surgery and we all decided it would be best if we post-poned his surgery until 7/8 so that he could stay the night and be monitored for 24 hours. It calmed our nerves and gave us peace bc we knew it was what is best for him. If something happened to him after his surgery here at home we would've had to take him to an Emergency Vet a half hour away with them not knowing anything about his medical history so it was a blessing that we were waiting.
It gave me more time to do research and learn as much as I could about immunotherapy so we felt good about that treatment protocol as well.
We prayed over him and went inside to do our drop off. As we were waiting in our private room for the vet tech to come and get him, we both started crying again. It was the same room we were in when we got his diagnosis and everything just came flooding back.
When our vet tech walked in the room she immediately came over to me to comfort me. She was the sweetest girl ever! Her name is Jen and she has a sweet fur baby named Jacob that has been living with cancer for over a year so she knows exactly what we are going through.
She was going to be taking care of Max during his surgery and she would be monitoring him afterwards. She put my phone number in her phone and told me she would take pictures of him later when she updated me. It gave us so much peace that he would be with such a sweet girl and we felt instantly calm and comforted. Big wet kisses and huggies and Max was off to surgery.
We drove home praying and crying and praying. This surgery is very low risk so we knew he would be ok and we were thankful we would finally have answers. We were trying to not get excited about the fact that his first biopsy came back negative for cancer but it was hard to not have that hope. I started to talk myself into it being just an infection again and told myself everyone was wrong and that he'd be just fine.
At noon, Max went in for his surgery and everything went smooth and well. He came through it with flying colors. Here are pictures that Jen sent us during his recovery.
Max did great! He was resting comfortably and did well with the anesthesia and the doctor was able to get enough of the tumor removed to send part of it to have the Torigen Vaccine made of it.
Hip-Hip-Hooray!
We were so excited! The doctor did tell us it looked "grossly like a tumor" so we knew that night that it was a tumor. Our only hope left was that it was a benign tumor, however, in my research I read that that would be very rare. If it was a prostatic tumor it would be malignant.
The night Max stayed over in the vet hospital was the last night our family was going to be in town so we took advantage of the fact Max was not at home and went to dinner. We had not been able to go anywhere during their 3 week visit since everyone was sick and since we couldn't leave Max for long periods of time. I also told Colin I wasn't leaving my boy. With everything happening, I didn't want to be away from him for one single second.
Even though our vacation time with our family turned out VERY different than what we had hoped, we were so thankful they were here. We laughed together, we cried together, and they were there to support us. Taking care of everyone was what I needed so I didn't just sit and cry all the time so their trip here was exactly what it should have been.
Colin took his family to the airport the next morning and then he stopped by the house to pick me up and we headed 2 hours north to go and see our boy! We could not wait to pick him up!!!
When we got there and people heard we were coming to get Max they said "Oh we love Max!!!!! He's been running around here all day!". It was so good to hear! He makes friends wherever he goes!
We got our discharge instructions and then we had to pull around to the back of the building to the discharge door where they would bring Max to us. It was like we were waiting to walk through the doors to a surprise party or something! The anticipation was killing us and we were BEYOND EXCITED to see him.
We could hear him coming before they even opened the door with the sliding and clickity clack of his toes running! He burst through the door and came running to us and it was such a happy reunion! Tears of joy that our boy was ok and the pack was back together (or we would be soon once we got home to Sammy Lammington).
In the car we went and then the loooonnnggggg wait would continue as we waited to hear Max's results. We were told it would be 7 days again.
It wasn't.
Cost of his surgical biospy:
$2,800
❤️
ReplyDeleteLove your Max story 💖 thanks for sharing
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