A new direction

I had meant to post last Tuesday, when Tony was supposed to have his biopsy, but it was postponed until last Thursday. I have an 11AM-12:15PM class Tuesday and Thursday, so I popped him into his carseat and drove him up to the vet for his 8AM appointment, then turned around and went home. About 5 minutes after I walked in the door, the phone rang and the caller ID showed it was the vet. Reading that, you probably have the same sense of foreboding that I had then. It wasn't good. While they were doing the pre-anesthesia exam, Dr. Kroll noticed that Tony's muzzle was swollen on one side. He has a mass there and another on the other side of the mouth towards the back. She began listing my options, and I stopped her as soon as she pointed out that he was there and prepped already, so it would be easy to biopsy the masses as well as his skin lesions. "Do it," I said. I didn't want her to tell me how much it would cost right then, figuring that when I went to pick him up was soon enough for that and I didn't want to be tempted to postpone finding out what this fresh catastrophe was going to mean.

I picked him up Thursday night, and he seemed a bit groggy, but otherwise his same old self. Even the techs were saying that if he didn't look the way he did (much of his fur shaved off, his face swollen, etc.), you wouldn't know there was anything wrong with him from his behavior. All weekend long he was fairly peppy and alert, and he still is today. But when I got home after my 8AM class today, I had another call from Dr. Kroll. The news was bad.

The biopsies showed that the masses and the skin lesions had the same cause: lymphoma. She was more upset than I was; I was numb (still am). I told her that I needed some time to take this in and figure out what questions to ask, and she told me to call her anytime, saying, "I'm always here." That actually made me laugh, because she certainly seems to be there all the time, even on days when I know she is scheduled to be off.

I wanted to get this posted as soon as possible for my family members who live all around the country, but I really don't have much more to say now. It looks as though this blog is about to go in a new direction.

The Zemanta feed just popped up the photo below with the caption "Shuttle's exuberance for life, lymphoma and all." I'm going to take this as a good omen.

Image by dglassme via Flickr