But wow. Sometimes a persons intuition is scary. I’m going to go off track real quick, and tell a story about one of my other dogs, Kingston.
A little over a year ago, I was told that my older mastiff had lymphoma. I had chest X-rays, an ultrasound, and had the lymph nodes aspirated. I was told by both vets at the practice plus the internal medicine specialist who did the ultrasounds, that it was lymphoma. I did not have the aspirate sent out to Colorado, because the only purpose in doing that was to do chemo, and we decided not to do chemo for him (due to how poorly he was doing, and not wanting to wait to treat his horrible symptoms), so I never had that 100% diagnosis, but they all agreed, lymphoma was it. He had about 3 weeks to live.
I didn’t believe them. I can’t explain why, but I didn’t. People thought I was in denial. Serious denial.
He was put on Prednisone to help take down swelling in his rear legs that was so bad that he could not bend them at all. Most dogs gain weight on Prednisone. Not Kingston, he lost a lot of weight, somewhere around 40lbs. He LOOKED like a cancer patient. But still I didn’t feel right. Even though I looked up the proper Prednisone dose for a dog of his size, and knew it was in the range of normal, I felt like I was poisoning him every time I gave it to him. I weaned him down, and then down again, and even at half the dose of Prednisone that he was initially prescribed, he was still getting weaker and weaker. My vet said that half of the dose of Prednisone could not possibly be effective, let alone be causing him so much trouble.
Skinny Kingston
One Friday, when he couldn’t stand up to poop any more, I made the appointment for a vet to come out and let him go to sleep that coming Monday. After I did that, I dropped him way down on the Prednisone, until he was only getting 1/8th of what was prescribed. And he started getting stronger. In one day, I saw an improvement. By Monday morning, I knew it wasn’t his time. I canceled the appointment.
Kingston went on to gain his weight and strength back. He still has flare ups of swelling in his legs, and has been through tons of testing with no answers… but he is alive. Happy and alive and as healthy as I could hope.
I am telling this story, because I had no such feelings of disbelief when it came to Ti. In fact, I did not believe for a second that he had arthritis like my vet said. I felt so strongly that something else, something worse, was wrong, that I made an appointment at a new vet the very next day. I walked in knowing that my dog had cancer. When the vet called it an MCL tear, I was not relieved. I knew it wasn’t. When I saw the X-ray, I didn’t even look at his ligaments… All I could see was the dark shadowy place on his bone. Sometimes I hate being right.
The biggest takeaway I get from this whole thing is to listen to your gut! If something doesn’t feel right, please, trust your intuition. Vets are very important to our beloved pets health, but they do not know everything, and they don’t know your animals like you do.