Good News. Bad News

"I guess you don’t really own a dog, you rent them. 

And you have to be thankful that you had a long lease."

 Joe Garagiola

The good news is Maizey does NOT have osteosarcoma, the bone-eating, fast-moving, one-month-to-live kind of cancer. 

The bad news is she still has cancer. She is still terminal. 

The good news, her lease has been extended.

The bad news is we have no way of knowing for how long. 

On Jan. 18, at Dr. Katie’s prompting, John took Maizey back to Merrill Road Animal Clinic for new x-rays. It was time to get a bird’s eye view of the tumor, instead of guessing. It’s not that we don’t believe in miracles, or have grateful hearts that she’s lived longer than anyone predicted, but clearly things have not progressed as expected.  Since Dr. Rogowski was the first to spot the cancer, an almost too small to see gray spot, we opted to go back to square one instead of going to (and incurring the cost of) a different specialist. 

Ready or not, Maizey is here!

Maizey likes to announce herself when she walks into a place. The Merril Road staff knows to have a room ready when she arrives. Maizey believes she is getting special treatment, when, in fact, they are trying to squelch her enthusiasm. In the sparsely appointed office covered in easy to clean tile, Maizey’s barks ricochet off the walls. It’s unnerving to the other patients and their owners. Hell, it's unnerving to me. As we wait for an unobstructed path (no dogs in sight) to the x-ray room, Maizey paces around, then plops herself down under the only seat in the room. John and I fidget. Maybe ignorance is bliss.  Do we really want to see a giant hole in Maizey’s shoulder? Even though I’ve been the one pushing for this, I begin to have second thoughts. I imagine a glum Dr. Rogowski, walking in the room, carrying a sheet of black film that she snaps into an old timey light box. In that moment I want to squeeze my eyes shut, and stick my fingers in my ears so I can’t hear anything that’s being said.

The reality was, as usual, much less dramatic. Doctor Rogowski appeared concerned, but smiling. It can't be too bad if someone talking about cancer smiles, right? We looked at digitized radiographs on her I-pad. Instead of a massive tumor, Maizey’s shoulder looks like it’s been covered in a fine lace doily. Yes, the cancer has grown, but it has not (and typically won’t) cross the joint. It has not metastasized to her lungs. We are unabashedly relieved. We are grateful. At the same time we are scratching our heads, wondering about the conversations we had back in May about amputation, chemo, and a short life span. Something is not adding up.

Sometimes in life you have to push the reset button. John found the original paperwork from the orthopedic surgeon. Nowhere did it state that Maizey has OSTEO sarcoma. Instead the diagnosis is “undifferentiated sarcoma.” WTF? In the end, cancer is cancer. No point in looking back. We’ve been blessed with way more time than we ever thought we’d have. The lesson here is to take each day as it comes, not to worry so much about a future that may turn out different from what you expected.

In the last month Maizey, the dog who walks with an obvious limp and somedays cannot put any weight on her right leg,  has jumped over the back fence twice, chased too many squirrels to count, dug a hole half-way to China, gone swimming, convinced “Grammy” to hand feed her and body-slammed her brother on a regular basis. She does not have the stamina she once had, and her recovery time - lying on the floor panting like she just ran a marathon - is longer. She’s started this thing where she licks Buddy’s face until he looks up at me with eyes that say, “mooom, make her stop.” The other day, she hopped up in my lap and began licking me. Dr. Katie says it’s a show of dominance. As if I didn’t already know she’s the Alpha dog, the Queen Bee, the Top Banana, the Grand Poobah and the Big Cheese all wrapped in one crazy, lovable bull dog.