So, last Friday I was petting him and I felt his jaw - and it was SWOLLEN. Like his glands. We got an appointment, and Paul took him to see the vet. They put him on prednisone for his skin, and antibiotics for his ears (he also had an ear infection), and they ran a test to check on the swollen glands.
The vet called me on Monday afternoon to tell me the test results came back as lymphoma. Buster has lymphoma. Basically, he has cancer. Our Buster has cancer.
I've had dogs off and on my entire life and this is the first time I have ever had one with this disease. A dear friend's dog succumbed to lymphoma last year (or maybe it was the year before) and that was the first I'd ever even HEARD of lymphoma in dogs.
The vet said it is very common and is incurable. Without treatment, the pet may live a few months at best. With treatment (depending on what KIND of treatment), they survive for a longer period of time. Now here's the dilemma. We have had another test run to determine how far advanced this is. We do not have those results yet. Depending on what they show, we have one of two options - we can keep him on massive doses of prednisone (steroids) to keep him comfortable and hope for the best - knowing he probably won't be around too much longer. OR we can opt for chemotherapy, which is very invasive (as is all chemo) and costly and may buy us more time with our sweet boy.
We weren't even going to do the test (called staging - to determine the stage the cancer is in) but the other night during a terrible storm, Buster was so scared he climbed up onto the couch and curled up behind me, laid his head on my side and licked my hand while looking at me with tears in his eyes. I held him and his shaking stopped...it was as if he was telling me, 'please help me, mom'.....I don't want to die.
In that moment I knew we had to do all we could to give our boy more time.
As of right now, we're still uncertain of what the future holds - we won't know until the vets calls again with an update - after the test results come back again.
