Daisy

This was written by Mike and gives a better description of what's been going on...



Just wanted to let everybody know that Daisy is not doing so well. We had noticed a drop in appetite recently, and took her to the vet the other day as it was progressively getting worse and she was losing weight. Blood work there was completely normal, and there were no obvious symptoms, so we thought that maybe she had an issue with her teeth above the gumline. This seemed to be reinforced when we would offer her soft food, she would wolf it down, but was not interested in hard food. We set up an appointment with Rusty because he has x-ray equipment and could look for a wider range of issues. By the time we did that (took her to Rusty’s house on Sunday night), she was no longer interested in soft food.

Rusty took x-rays on Monday morning and found a large mass in her lung. This prompted us to send her to another vet clinic that has better imaging equipment because primary lung tumors are rare – they are usually the metastatic result of other cancers. The sonogram showed an abnormal spleen, and the vet wanted to do an endoscope of her gastric system. We were all for that until they told us how much it would cost. Then, she vomited without having had any food for some time and we decided that a gastric scope would only show us things we didn’t really want to see.

So, long story short, we are pretty sure she has cancer in her gastric system. We are basically at this point trying to make her comfortable and get her to eat so she can put back on some weight (she is normally 50-55 lbs and she is currently 39). So far today, she has had some grilled chicken and some Cheerios, which is more than she has eaten in a couple of days.

She will be 12 years old this summer, and has had a pretty good life. It is impossible to say how much longer she will live, but I can safely say she will be pretty spoiled during that time!



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I was dreading how she would look when I got home today. From the conversations that Mike and I had earlier in the day, I had a pretty bad picture in my mind. But I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. She's been eating chicken, drinking plenty of water and has been up and walking around. Mike tried again to get her to eat some canned dog food, but she would have none of it. We even had a difficult time getting her to take her meds this evening. She has always taken them with peanut butter, and she refused this time. I don't know if she's just got a keen sense of the pills or what, but it just wasn't happening... and we tried everything. We're half-way convinced that she just woke up one morning, looked at her food bowl and thought to herself, "Ya know, I've been eating this same stuff for almost 12 years now. I'm done." We may be cooking chicken for her from here on out....