Amore: C-dog 2.0

Last week, I took my Amore dog back to the veterinarian for his respiratory issues.  Since he had been on three rounds of antibiotics, and those didn’t fix it, he needed checked out more thoroughly.

While Duke hid in the corner from the vet and the vet technicians, Amore was getting something put into his nose to see what was really going on in there.

There was no sign of infection from the sample they viewed through the microscope.  There was, however, another type of cancer cell they could see without having to do an official biopsy of the tissue in his nose.  The vet explained that this was a type of cancerous nasal tumor that would not be as fast-moving as his other vascular type cancerous tumors.

He explained that there was no good treatment for this sort of tumor because the treatment was certainly worse than the respiratory issues. (It sounded awful, quite frankly.)

I had felt a tumor coming back on his side—the side where they removed the other one several months ago—so I asked him to feel it again.  He had just felt it a month ago when I took him in the first time for the respiratory issue and it wasn’t “scary” according to the vet.  This time it was.  The vet then shared he was really surprised that another one hadn’t cropped up elsewhere in his body by now.

We had a long discussion about quality of life with regard to his joints, his vascular tumor and his nasal tumor.  We talked about his lack of endurance on walks, even though he is doing very well on the heart medication.  I tried to ask as many questions as I could think of to be clear on what I should worry about and what I should not.

I shared that I was simply following Amore’s lead in terms of being bothered by any of his symptoms.  He doesn’t seem to know any better.  He doesn’t know his cardiac output is limited.  He doesn’t know he is a cancer dog with more than one type of cancer in his body.  He just goes about his day doing whatever he feels like doing at the time and sleeping in between.

He is happy.  He has a good quality of life.  That is really all that matters to any of us who love the boy.