Little milestones

The past week has been a lot of little victories and some veterinary mental strain.  Maggie is three – almost four – weeks into her recovery and doing pretty well for an old gal.  Some of our milestones  this week were:

* getting her staples out (she did great although she does.not.like.doctors.)

* perfecting a way into and out of the car – I have old desk drawer that I put upside-down in front of the car door for her to use as a step – it’s a big enough surface that she’ll actually hop onto it and it makes for a much less dramatic jump,

* walks, glorious walks!!  Maggie went to the park twice this week and she is the picture of pure joy the entire time.  Ears perk up, tail’s a-waggin’ and you can tell she forgets all her troubles (so do I).  Even just a few minutes of seeing her so happy and alive makes up for days of worrying…

* the full-body shake – this is one of those little things that I watched her “get back” and is so cute.  Maggie always used to shake from her head to her tail, especially when she’s excited.  On one front leg she wasn’t steady enough to do this and I had noticed her in the first 2 weeks starting to tilt her head and then stopping.  Little by little this week she starting giving her head a little shake and then doing it with more confidence, and by today she could do her whole wiggly body shake and I swear she was extra happy about that.

* tried out the Ruffwear harness a few times, and she’s getting used to it.  I’m hopeful that she’ll get comfortable with us helping her up the stairs at night and then perhaps some day I can sleep in my own bed again rather than camping out downstairs next to the doggy bed.  I think everyone on this forum has done this!  🙂

* To the Ends of the Earth! … or at least the block! – Maggie had more spring in her step tonight and we walked to the corner of our block and back…that had seemed like 100 miles away just 2 weeks ago.  She wanted to keep going but I turned her around and good thing, ’cause she pooped out half-way back, but we made it home after a nice rest in a neighbor’s front yard.

We also got Maggie’s final histopathology report back and it’s really a mixed bag.  The tumor on her leg was an undifferentiated sarcoma, grade 3 – apparently being undifferentiated gives it a higher grade than one they can trace to specific cell types (the initial biopsy said liposarcoma, which generally has a better prognosis).  We knew it was locally aggressive and invasive, but the report shows that there was no sign it had invaded deep into the bone.  First oncologist recommended 5 rounds of chemo, our regular vet said since it didn’t reach the bone marrow she thought there’s less threat of spreading elsewhere, and we’re waiting to talk to a fantastic oncologist at a teaching hospital whose opinion I will give strong consideration.  When we thought we were dealing with a liposarcoma with low (20-25%) chance of spreading, we had told ourselves – “just surgery, no chemo, take our chances” but the new diagnosis threw all the super-hard chemo considerations into the mix.  Maggie falls into the category of significant stress from doctor visits and even 5 rounds of chemo for uncertain results (20-30% effective against sarcomas? something like that) seems like a fair amount of stress and a total crap shoot.

So with all that cruddy chemo stuff to worry about, I am just going to focus on Maggie’s happy smile and positive milestones this week.   Here we are at the park.  All smiles.  I can never get a picture of her up and hopping, I’m just not that coordinated.