Tomorrow’s The Day Of Reckoning With Surgeon
11-1/2 hours from now I will be sitting with Dr Aronsohn, DVM, asking him if this were his dog would he do the surgery. I am also following the advice of Dr Kerri Schwartz from Montgomery Texas who told me, just in case to withhold food from Charmer tonight if the surgeon can do the surgery right away, as every day counts with fast growing tumors.
Dr Schwartz, along with several other people from around the world, have been providing me with excellent personal support, advice and their own experiences with their dogs that have gone through the same cancer as Charmer or the same procedures. Without their help, I would still be lost and confused.
The last 3 days a lady from California has been sharing with me the story of her dog that had oral cancer and how she did undergoing a radical risky maxillectomy. Her experience has been a great help to me in understanding what to expect afterwards at home. I am happy to report that her dog is now 9 months past her maxillectomy, happy and well, and back to chewing on rawhides, completely impervious to her now slightly crooked nose that her upper canines are gone.
Dr. Schwartz lost her dear dog, Piggers, to melanoma. She, too, enrolled Piggers in the same Wisconsin Study Charmer will be in, as well as the New York study, but she told me that Piggers already had the cancer spread to her lungs when she started.
I hope that Charmer does not experience metastasis in his body during the wait of the surgery and starting the vaccines. But a veterinarian researcher at Wisconsin told me that even then, in the dogs that do respond, the vaccines have been shown to halt the growth of the mets (metatasis) and even shrink them, some completely. So at this point I do have hope.
I have to now find a way to print out my list of questions for the surgeon tomorrow that Dr Schwartz actually helped me to put together with a couple of really excellent questions to ask to decide if this is right for Charmer. I say find a way to print it because my printer’s ink cartridge is bone dry and the replacement cartridge I ordered hasn’t come yet, so I will be doing a rain dance over that bone-dry cartridge while I shake and wiggle it over the garbage can to root loose enough print powder to print the 1 page.
Right now, though, it doesn’t seem there is any other hope besides this drastic surgery to heal Charmer, other than a bolt of light shooting down from heaven onto Charmer’s face and evaporating the mass from his mouth.
My mission tonight with Charmer is to stuff his belly with one good, high calorie food that can carry him through his initial surgery, if it takes place tomorrow.