Results…

Yesterday I FINALLY got the call from Maryland, the one I’d been dying to receive. The one I’d been dreading. I still had 5 hours left to teach high schoolers and be a calm, composed adult around my students. My heart broke a couple hours later when I got a text from a roommate that she was energetic and playful, showing very few signs of being 7 days post-amputation.

The biopsy findings revealed that the tumor was a fibrosarcoma, grade 3. They were able to see cancer-free margins, but barely, and according to the surgeon, it will probably only take a month or two to take her from us to the rainbow bridge. Chemo might add a couple more months, and radiation might add a year, but neither of those treatment options seem fair for how little time they would give her.

I took her in today to get a couple bumps looked at; one is a seroma, and the other is the muscle flaps (technical terms…) sewn together. Thankfully the vet didn’t feel any tumor-like lumps or bums. Based on how aggressive the tumor was, once we start to see tumors, the lungs will not be far behind. She did try to give a little hope and said that they do surprise us sometimes with many extra months, and I’ve found that to be true in many of your stories here on Tripawds. It’s very encouraging to read things like that, but sometimes that isn’t enough to stop the visions of bringing her to the vet one more last time, or bringing her home for a minute so Kho can smell her body to say goodbye.

I’m trying not to cry as I type this…it’s not working. 

The summer is fast approaching, and from mid-July to mid-August I leave on tour to teach a drum corps. I’m doing my best not to dwell, but it’s hard to imagine leaving her if she’s still doing ok, or if a tumor forms before I leave. Plus I’ll be moving at the beginning of July. I’m so overwhelmed with all this and how fast it’s happened. How does my beautiful, healthy, sweet-as-can-be Sheherazade have an aggressive cancer? And then guilt sets in with how many people suffer from cancer, and Raz is an animal. It’s so many emotions and thoughts, my brain is exhausted!

For now, we take each day and enjoy it. Raz has pooped about 4 times since surgery, and she played for the first time in over a month! Tonight she climbed up the side of the dog crate, much like a monkey, and made it to the top! I’m so proud of her and how she’s adapting. She’s being well-spoiled, and I’m trying to be fair and love on Kho just as much, so he doesn’t get jealous.

Enjoying all our time,

Cassie (meowther)

Raz (tripawd sister)

Kho (monkeybutt brother)

 

SHE POOPED! And is pooped…

Raz pooped today!

Just a quick one tonight. Raz convinced me that she was ready to go for a walk. So I put her in her pretty blue harness and we walked around the apartment. She was insistent on going to her normal hiding place under a bed, but I picked her up and brought her to another spot so she would have to walk back.

We made some pit stops where she stopped and ate her brother’s chicken. She had to take the hardest route possible–made her own obstacle course.

I guess I won’t need to create obstacle courses for some DIY PT. She’ll do it herself!

AND THEN SHE POOPED! I have a big litter box that Kho the monkeybutt uses right now, and it has one end that is lower, but of course she hopped right over the tall end.

No modified litter boxes for this stubborn girl!

I picked up some ThunderSpray, and as an early observation, it seems to be helping a bit. It took stinkybutt longer to hiss at Raz than before, so fingers crossed!

Baby girl is tuckered out now, and so am I! Goodnight!

Cassie (meowther)

Raz (Sheherazade, newbie tripawd)

Kho (Khovanschina, monkeybutt)

Monkeybutt, Rest, and a Cone of Shame

She’s eating on her own! Something she wouldn’t even do the weekend before surgery!
Inner-tube of shame and frozen corn…grr. -_-

Home at last!

We finally arrived home yesterday. The first few hours were tough…after talking to our vet, it sounds like she was still dealing with some of the surgery medications on top of the pain medicine she took in the morning. It took her a few hours to really settle down. Between the hyperactivity from the meds, the pain, and being cooped up in a (comfortable) dog kennel in the car, she was so restless and vocal for awhile. Thankfully she wasn’t making such severe sounds as the evening after the surgery, but she was still rather pitiful yesterday.

Raz enjoys car rides, but she likes to decide where she sits…being jailed in a dog kennel is the WORST.

The princess is now in her double-dog luxury apartment. Sometimes she gets mad, but other times she enjoys the separation from her monkeybutt brother.  Kho, the four-legged four-year-old little brother, has ALWAYS been the instigator in their little tiffs. He wants to play with his sister, and she doesn’t usually appreciate that…Kho was actually really gentle with Raz while she was suffering from the growing tumor this last month. He was the protective brother, sleeping on top of her bed-rest kennels at night, giving her sweet little sniffs and kisses. But now, as we have returned reeking like doctors and hospital grossness, this little turd is hissing at her every time he passes by. If anyone has any tips that worked for their monkeybutts (particularly the cat variety), that would be great! (I’ll post in the forum as well…)

We experienced this a bit when we moved from Mississippi to Massachusetts…24 hours in a car (Kho hates car rides), and the two of them couldn’t even look at each other without hissing.

Kho checking on four-legged Raz

Last night I picked up a ZenCollar at the vet. It’s a much more comfortable looking collar than the cone of shame. It seems like the sutures are bothering Raz just a touch, and I hypothesize that it’s going to get worse and more itchy as it heals. So she wears the cone of shame (sort of). More like the fabric-inner-tube of shame. She has continued to pee in the litter box, is eating a little at a time, but still has yet to poop. I’m not too concerned yet, it’s only been two days since the surgery. Fingers crossed that it will happen soon! We have been putting frozen corn wrapped in a cloth every so often as well. She fusses for a second, as gentle as I try to be, but then settles down a bit once the cold starts to feel good.

My favorite bit so far is something my roommates noticed last night. It could be the drugs (doc says the bup can make them dysphoric at time, making her think she feels better than she does?), but they think she is acting more herself than she was this past couple weeks! That is great news, making me feel a lot better about the decision to take her leg.

Cheers to continued improvement!

Cassie McDonald (mom)

Raz (Scheherazade, newbie tripawd) @tripawd_razzle (Instagram)

Kho (Khovanschina, annoying brother)

Stubborn Cat!

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HEADING HOME!!!

Raz had her surgery yesterday. She was a hot mess when I picked her up last night…making lots of sounds I’ve only heard on the rare occasion I’ve tried to bathe her!

Kho LOVES baths….Raz definitively does NOT. 

The doctor said that the tumor looked pretty aggressive, and though she thought they were able to get it all, it was really close to the pelvis, so she gave a pretty poor prognosis. They sent it in for testing, but they were certainly unable to get the 3cm margins they were hoping for.

I’m going back and forth between being hopeful and wondering when her time will be up. Raz, of course, doesn’t realize that she only has three legs, so she wants to wander around EVERYWHERE. We were staying with family, so last night and this morning she wanted to explore. Now we’re sitting in the car about to head out and she wants to get out of her dog kennel and explore the car…

I am worried that her pain meds aren’t enough. I talked to my vet office back home last night, and I’ll probably call this morning to see if we can up her dose. Currently she’s on 50mg gabapentin 2x day, and .3ml bup 3x day. She’s so alert, I’d really like to see her a little more out of it, at least for the car ride.

Pictures to come sometime tonight/tomorrow!

Cassie McDonald (mom)

Raz (Scheherazade, newbie tripawd) @tripawd_razzle (Instagram)

Kho (Khovanschina, annoying brother)

Razzle Dazzle the newbie

Add an excerpt to your posts to provide a summary for readers in many blog themes!

What a whirlwind two days!

I’m not even sure if I’ve entirely processed what’s about to happen. Yesterday my 4-year-old cat I’ve had since she was 8 weeks old was diagnosed with (probably) a soft-tissue sarcoma, and they told me I would have to remove the leg ASAP. So today, Raz and I drove all day and are getting ready to rest for the surgery tomorrow. AH!

Raz is a beautiful blue-gray shorthair, 4 years old (her birthday was a week ago!). She has an adopted brother cat, Kho, who is a month younger than her, also a blue-gray shorthair. We live in the Boston area with three roommates who are wonderful aunts and uncle to the kitties. Everything was going well with them; they love each other, but like sibling they have their moments. We had a routine.

It started mid-March. My roommates and I noticed that Raz wasn’t really acting her normal self. She was hiding more, being less social, more irritable with  We chalked it up to neurotic behavior, joked about needing a cat counselor. I feel AWFUL about that now, knowing what’s been going on with her.

We notice a slight limp on March 22, so I called the vet and made an appointment for the next day at a sister-location. She had gone from being 12.5lb in November at our checkup to 10! They did bloodwork, x-rays, and they couldn’t figure out what was going on. So we walked away with a bill, antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory. I went to our normal vet a few days later, got a better x-ray, and still no answers. We went to a vet hospital a few days after that, and Raz saw three specialists who STILL couldn’t figure out what was going on with my cat! The limp was getting more pronounced, and she wasn’t getting any better.  So the doctor ordered two weeks of strict bed rest, more antibiotics, probiotics, and gabbapentin.

Boy, this is getting long…

Fast forward two weeks to this past weekend…Raz had lost a lot of muscle tone in her bad leg, but there was a more pronounced lump forming on her hip. So I spent a lot of time in quiet tears fearing the worst. Yesterday we had our check-up. The new special doctor said she believes it to be a soft-tissue sarcoma, and that the leg needs to go. Then she told me the cost. $1200 for the CT scan and 4000 for the surgery. So, of course, I started crying again because on my teacher salary there’s no way I could ever afford that!

With the final tendrils of hope, I got home with Raz, and started googling. Within g just a couple minutes I found this place in Maryland, Spay Now, and they do amputations for $355! Plus a biopsy for an additional cost. I called them right away, and they had an appointment for Wednesday—tomorrow. Hence the 9 hours on the road today.

I’m so sorry this is dragging on…it’s nice to have a place that I can just let it all out, and I am so grateful for this site!!!

While we were on the road, I decided to to try and do what I should have done last night: x-rays. Yesterday was so chaotic that I didn’t take my own vet up on their offer to do xrays last night. But I worried that if the cancer had gotten to her lungs, and amputation would be an unnecessary pain for her. So we stop at Tri-county Vet in the middle of nowhere, and the wonderful people there said she looked clear!

So fingers crossed that tomorrow they can amputate the leg and get all the necessary margins to eliminate any fear of remaining cancer.

Thank you for listening to me ramble! I am so appreciative of this community, and I look forward to reading other stories and connecting with other Tripawds and digging into the resources on this site! 

Cassie McDonald

Raz (Scheherazade), soon-to-be tripawd

Kho (Khovanschina), annoying brother