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(this is a ramble - it's a collection of thoughts that I haven't been able to face until now...hopefully they will help someone else)
6 weeks ago today I lost my beloved 10 years and 8 months German Shorthaired Pointer, Cadence, to hemangiosarcoma (heart). My story is similar to others - I became aware of something not being quite right a couple of months before when he went outside and threw up really bright bile, and lots of it (totally different to usual) and then came inside and crawled onto my lap and wouldn't leave....
I was in the middle of moving house, so I initially thought that it might be the stress of that, and then moving to a friends for a week, into a motel for another week and back to the friends while I was between properties. One day, he slipped going around a corner and just wasn't right from then - I thought he was in pain from an arthritic hip so the vet recommended that i start him on aspirin - and that made a huge difference to the quality of his life (and oddly - didn't seem to have an effect on the thickness of his blood - he still clotted rapidly and we never had pale gums)
First real symptom was lack of appetite - but had that before with prostate enlargement when younger, so I just dropped back into the forcefeeding regime which he was used to (he'd survived a spider bite 18 months before and had only made it through because I'd loved him enought to move heaven and earth to get him better and had to forcefed him at that stage) - didn't think it a huge problem, then one night his heart rate went through the roof - up to 130 beats a minute at rest - he didn't seem uncomfortable, but was breathing shallowly (I'd forgotten that!!! he actually started breathing shallowly a few months before that ...). Seemed ok later.....something else that I'd wondered about - he'd 'tripped' on a pile of rubble while we were up at the site for the new house and gone 'head over turkey' and come up screaming like he'd broken a leg...but I think he was scared more than anything - so I'm wondering if he'd had a 'bleed' (I'd thought heart attack at the time), and he had another not long after the increased heart rate episode where he jumped off the bed and 'tripped' (my usually agile antelope) and while I was holding him, his heart was all over the place (another heart attack I thought) - but everything was so non-specific.....
One day he could walk 4kms, the next day he would walk barely 50m, and that was behind you.....just too tired to walk anywhere (in retrospect - another bleed)...he just wanted to lie around in the sun. If he came in after a short walk to toilet and had a drink of cold water, it'd come straight back up - I had to give him tepid water to drink - and towards the end, it had to be even warmer than that as his system wouldn't tolerate cold water (?) - I have no idea why. His body shape changed - he thickened through the front of his abdomen, but still nothing that you could put a finger on.
The last weekend I had him, he stayed with friends and wouldn't eat - and when he came home he looked like he was bloating - but wasn't - and I watched that night and his belly subsided somewhat - the next morning, a tumour on his foot (which had been growing and was due to be operated on in 5 days) burst - and there was no way that I could have kept it clean, so I drove 100kms to the vet on the way to work to get the operation done early (if the unltrasound and bloodwork that we had already planned was ok - I knew there was something, but I didn't know what at that stage)...I asked him to check Cadence's belly out - and he said that he didn't like what he felt - and I knew then that i wouldn't see him again - so I said goodbye to him (trying very hard not to start howling and upset him any more) - and howled all the way to work and spent the next 4 hours waiting for the phonecall that I knew was coming......at a few minutes after 12 the vet rang and told me that he had hemangiosarcoma of the heart and also a 13cm tumour in his abdomen........I had to let him go - I couldn't do anything that would make him miserable........I'm sitting here with tears streaming down my face - but I hope that something here may help someone diagnose their beloved friend earlier than I did.........
love to you all, I know what you've felt......
Jane
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