World wide web meet Skizzles tumor

So you know how normally when a doctor shows you an x ray or a cat scan (i'm sure at some point you have experienced this) you have no idea what you are looking at and you just sort of nod and make mumbling noises suggesting you know what they are talking about... well quite obviously this is not the case here. See that ginormous grotesque white blob on the left side of the cat scan, that is Skye's tumor. Now for those of you who have looked at Skye's pictures, you can see how big it is from the outside, well, its twice as big on the inside. I practically fell over when I saw these images… her left kidney is now on the right side of her body. This only further amazed me at how happy she still is.

She had her first round of radiation today, and although I had been told by doctors that most dogs deal with radiation fine, I still expected a sick dog when I picked her up. But this was not the case she came bounding out the door wiggling like she does when she gets excited to see you.

We decided to go ahead with what they call palliative radiation for Skye Different to normal radiation; it is given in fewer visits and is done in much stronger doses. It has less initial side effects, but can lead to larger issues in the future. This was a hard decision that my dad helped me to come to, this approach is more to help her quality of life, than to cure her. We didn’t want to put a 17 year old dog through surgery and multiple radiation treatments, creating a sore seeping wound on her side.

So Skye will hopefully get another 6 months maybe a year (however long it takes for the tumor to grow back), I am doing this in a hopes that old age will get Skizzle and one night she will go to sleep and won’t wake up. The truth is even if we did everything to “fix” Skizzle, it would not only probably make her miserable but inevitably microscopic cancer cells would be left in her body and probably another tumor would get her eventually if this one doesn’t. This has been a hard realization to come to, but who knows maybe it will take another year to grow back and that’s a lot of time for an old dog.

I just want to give her (and I) a little more time while she does still enjoy life (in particular English Cheddar cheese). I promised my dad I won’t be selfish and put the dog through suffering just because I don’t want to say goodbye.