Thanks to everyone for your kind comments about the recent bad news about our dog. (Even someone who really detests me because of my position on the vaccine/autism issue was in this instance kind.) I don’t know if I’ll feel much like blogging for a while; on the other hand, blogging has been therapeutic for me in the past when bad things happen, even if I don’t actually write about them. It’s always been a good way to take my mind off of badness by concentrating on other badness, such as quackery. Also, Echo has often been my little (OK, well, not so little) black blog buddy, lying nearby or next to me on the couch or on the floor while I sat with my laptop in front of the TV set. In any case, I don’t want to turn this blog into the “my dog has cancer blog,” but I do want to mention one more thing.
The truly hard part of this experience is that, other than the bulge in her hip and the fact that Echo gets winded fairly easily, there’s little in the way of signs that anything is amiss. Yesterday was a very good day for Echo in that we had family over, and we took her for a decent length walk, during which she did quite well, only getting winded near the end as we approached home. This morning she was, as is frequently her wont, lying by the front door, waiting for joggers or people walking their dogs and barking at them. She still chomps her food and treats. As long as that’s the case, we plan on enjoying what little time we have left with her. My wife (who’s a nurse) starts working nights again this week, and I still work the usual days; so Echo will never be alone for more than a couple of hours at a time.
In a way, I hope she just bleeds out from her spleen suddenly in her sleep (a common end point of this particular tumor) or something like that, something quick and relatively painless. However, we are planning for the case where that doesn’t happen and her condition deteriorates (which will be soon). When that happens we will have no choice but to do the right thing to end her suffering.
But not just yet. We still have a little bit of time, and we intend to make the most of it.
