I pray for better, but we are at a stage where he may head downhill. If it is in the spleen, as I suspect, I will have the spleen removed. It could buy him some time. If it is as the vet suspects a tumor between the spleen and pancreas, we will go from there. I can help slow the progression with his diet, exercise, and medication, but we are just buying time. I will have the spleen removed if there are no signs of any other large tumors. It will buy him a month, maybe two. At his age, in dog years, that is a lot more time than it is to us.
I did move my dogs to a different vet, but, when in a similar place with them as you are now, I had grown reluctant to put either of them through the treatments the specialists offered. “Been there, done that” with my last two dogs and I didn’t what to put them or me through it again.
I regret that. I should have let them remove my girl’s spleen when they wanted to. The cancer that formed there soon after quickly spread to her liver and took her life.
I think maybe she would have had more time and perhaps better quality time, too, than how it turned out.
I was also reluctant to put my boy through whatever they might have wanted to do to him when he was showing symptoms of what took him. I regret that, too.
My hindsight guilt and the “what ifs”, the “if only I had” and the “I should have” regrets for those decisions still hurt and haunt me now a year after my boy passed last October.
I tell you these things, because I would not wish these sorts of regret on anyone. They had fun, good lives, but all I remember and feel lately are these regrets. They say that puppy breath is the cure for this kind of a broken heart, but I’m not ready.
May God bless you and your boy and all who care for him.