Something So Little

It was Tuesday night and I was sitting in a "Confident Canine" obedience class when I spotted it.  Lacey's toe was swollen.  My first thought was "WTF?  When did that happen?  She must have gotten a sliver or something in there on our walk.  Poor girl.  It must not feel very good."

The next morning I phoned the vet and made an appointment for that afternoon to have it looked at.  It wasn't until later that morning that I even considered it could be something other than a bug bite or an infection of some sort.  I started to look back through pictures on the blog and I think it's been there for a while.  I'm pretty sure it was there at the beginning of March and maybe even into February.  (It is hard to tell because if her feet were in focus, her head probably wasn't, so I would have deleted the pictures.  But you can kind of see a thickening of the one toe if you look closely.)

We had a needle aspiration done yesterday and they called this afternoon with the results...

Mast Cell Tumor - aka Cancer.  I held it together for as long as I could on the phone, but the poor vet had to deal with some blubbering at the end.  When I hung up the phone I just sobbed.  Work this afternoon was not fun.

It has hit me like a brick out of left field.  She's young, she's happy, she's healthy - or so I thought.  There are no symptoms except this tiny little lump between her toes.

How can something so little, be so bad?

We have an appointment with an Oncologist on Monday. She'll help us figure out what stage it is in - Stage I is good.  Stage III is bad. Best case scenario - she'll have a toe amputated and that will solve the problem.  Worst case scenario - it will have already spread and be too late.  I'm trying to not obsess over things and use Dr. Google too much until we know more, but it is hard not to.  I'm trying to comfort myself with knowledge but it isn't really helping.

I've spent all afternoon and evening randomly bursting into tears without notice.  All it takes is a simple thought.  So while I wanted you all to know, I don't want to talk about it.  If you know me in person please no sympathetic glances, or comforting hand squeezes or "I'm sorry's".  I won't be able to take it and I'm going to try and not spend the next 4 days as a blubbering mess - at least not while I'm in public.