My Year of Meaningful (2011)

I know I should probably be writing about how awesome the holiday was and how much fun we had (with the exception of me coming back with a horrible tendon injury from running on the beach for too long), but Reggie has been the main focus since we got back so I just can't get him out of my mind for now.

Before we left, our wonderful Vet (and co-committee member of the Animal people with us) was hmming and haaahing over whether or not to operate on the massive tennis-ball size lump that has been growing on Reg's left side for the last few months. The older a dog is, the less happy good vets are to operate on them because the anesthesia doesn't metabolize through their body easily anymore and their tissues don't heal well anymore after being sliced & diced. At any rate he said we'll give it a shot when we got back from the coast.

So monday we brought him in. We've also noticed some new lumps out of nowhere, and him slowing down and being a bit sloth-like. But our team of lovely Vet boys are my heroes and if anyone can work miracles, I know they can. He went under the knife early that afternoon and at 5:30 when I called to see if we could pick him up, they were STILL in surgery with him. Apparently this lump was way more than they had bargained for, it was all up in the chest cavity wall and everything. Anyway, those guys slaved away til after 6pm and called to let me know when it was over that our faithful old hound survived it, but just barely. They say he nearly died on the operating table and they had to do one of those dramatic ER-style emergency resuscitation things on him, shove a drip into him, and hold their own breaths a lot. So our boy just made it. He lost a lot of blood.

I picked him up today and he looked so bad it reduced me to a quivering mound of jelly right there in the waiting room. Super-lovelyVet and I had a long talk and he explained how hard it is for them to handle major ops at this age, and it was pretty clear that he's seen his last tumor removal - meaning the next time it grows back, we just have to let fate take it's course.

Essentially, the cancer will come back, and there will be nothing we can do. The lumps will grow again, and we'll just have to monitor him to ensure he doesn't get to the point of suffering. At which stage, there will be only one option this time, which will be his last trip to Super-lovelyVet. I had to ask him: "how will I know when he's suffering?" He said when he starts scratching or licking or showing signs of confusion and disorientation, maybe stumbling and losing balance, etc. They left a few of the newer, smaller lumps, because sometimes if too many of these are taken off at once, they go crazy and multiply even faster.

I just cry and cry whenever I think of not having him, even though I've been a dog owner my whole life and know how these things work. It's just that Reggie and his sister J were our first "kids" and after losing J. awhile back, Reggie was the remaining kid who will always be more special for that reason, than anyone else. Even last night while he had to sleep over at the vet's to wake up from his surgery, the house felt extra empty and extra horrible. No geriatric snoring coming from the blue chair in the bedroom, no little paw on my bedside at 3am asking nicely to go out for an old-man-midnight-pee. It just makes me think that this will soon be "normal", and we'll have to get used to it.

Luckily since he comes to the office with us, we'll be together 24/7 until that time comes, and I can give him as much attention and cuddles as he can take. I just don't know how I'm going to handle it when we notice the first telling signs. I think "will we bury him? or just leave him at the vet? If we bury him, where? how will we get his body back from the vet?" all these horrible morbid things. But it's time now - it's not something that will just happen "someday", it's happening now, and I just have to prepare mentally. All my life it was always dad who had to deal with these things. We would never even know what was happening until he would come back from the vet with a long face and the whole "it's very important to never let an animal suffer" speech.

Reggie post-op:

The incision is huge and bloody and all stapled up, and some of the smaller lumps are still on there, around the shaved area... they took one off his underbelly too, so he's got incisions underneath, as well.