Prognosis: Grim

The official test won’t come back until tomorrow, so my enternally optomistic husband keeps saying, “maybe it’s something else!”  The something else is a rare form of cancer.

I’m talking about my Holly dog.  The vet believes she has coccidioides.  In regular-speak, that is Valley Fever.  If you have ever lived in the desert southwest, you probably just did a sharp intake of breath.  If you’re from anywhere else, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about.

It is bad juju.  It’s a spore-type fungus that gets into your lungs & then the rest of your body.  I’m looking at the progression of this fungus and she is right on target – every single illness & problem she has had for the past 6 months.  It wasn’t diagnosed because we don’t live in an affected area – we traveled through a high-risk area for ONE day during our move.

One.  Damned.  Day.  One overnight stay in Fort Stockton, Texas, and here we are.

IF this test comes back positive, there are a few things we know.

1) She has a very severe case of it, very widespread – in her muscle tissue, bones, connective fibers (joints), lungs, and skin (that we know of).  Probably organs as well.  She has severe muscle loss everywhere already.

2) Treatment will be very expensive and very long-term, a year or longer of intense anti-fungal therapies and many, many hospitalizations and vet visits.  Because hers took so long to diagnose, it is likely to be lifelong.

3) Her survival odds, having gotten as sick as she is, are around 1/3.

We’ve already looked at this.  Hubby says, “she is too good of a dog to put through all of that with such low odds of survival or ever feeling better.”  Because it has already damaged her bones & joints, she would never have the quality of life she had before or ever be completely better.  This is a sporting/hunting dog whose favorite activity is running full-speed alongside a bicycle.  She hates sitting around.  She would probably be on anti-inflammatories and pain medications for the rest of her life – even now, on medication, she can hardly walk and can’t get up or down without a great deal of pain and effort.  She has lost almost 20% of her body weight in the past month and won’t even eat her favorite foods without a great deal of coaxing.  She can’t come when she is called.

If we wait, she will eventually start having seizures and other problems.  Hubby doesn’t want to put her to sleep until absolutely necessary.  Me – the bleeding heart of the family – I want to take her in when we get confirmation and have it done now, before the kids see her having seizures – before she feels worse.

You know I’ll blog again once the inevitable takes place.  Or when the specialist calls and says, “Doh! It’s so obvious!  She has this OTHER thing which can be treated with one round of antibiotics and this will all go away, and she’ll be back to normal!”