Lily has always been a fun, little dog with spunk. She, like other small dogs, periodically experienced trouble with a Luxating Patella. So when she began with a slight limp in early January, we assumed it was the patella acting up. We scheduled a vet appt on Jan 11th and we received an anti-inflammatory. But over the weekend, the limping became worse and she would not go up and down steps or use the leg. So I scheduled 2 appointments, one with a holistic vet for chiropractic and one with her regular vet. The holistic vet said that we needed to get a reverse sedation xray as soon as possible as she felt that this might not be a patella issue. She prescribed gabapentin and tramadol. We got an xray one week later and Lily's regular vet called me to the back to discuss the findings. He used words like bone destruction and amputation and gave us a referral to a local vet orthopedic for a consult. Both my husband and I were sick with worry. It was a long 4 day wait and we took Lily in to see Dr. B on a Wednesday morning, fasted and ready for a probably surgery. Dr. B. went over all the xrays and said that a biopsy would be needed to determine what was causing the bone damage - most likely cancer. He explained that Lily would never regain use of her leg and given that we had no way to know what we were dealing with, we opted for a full amputation of the leg. That was on February 1st.

Lily had her first chemo treatment on February 21st and will go through the 25 week regimen. Lily has a very unusual presentation of Lymphoma. It is not in her lymph nodes. It presented in the bone and in small skin nodules - similar to the benign bumps dog get. Additional testing called immunohistochemistry was done and an aspiration of one of the bumps was performed. The aspiration is what confirmed lymphoma. All of her vets were floored by the findings. They have never seen lymphoma like this. So Lily is a bit of unknown - we don't have a prognosis, but Team Lily is fully assembled and prepared to fight.

Cancer is not a sentence. It's a word. I read that in my research. Do your research. Ask questions. Love every day with your dog.