Survivors and Celebrations

Dusty's Story

Dusty had a medium-size fatty growth on her right side, probably like any normal dog over 10 years of age. She had it for well over a year, and the vet just checked her in January 2010 and said it was fine. Being an avid hiker with me, as her owner’s step-mom, I was rubbing her down in April 2010 due to soreness. I suddenly felt something hard on her right side. It was were that fatty growth used to be. Only it was bigger and pushing out of her side, like it was under pressure. I woke up my husband, the owner’s father, in alarm! We took her to the vet within a couple of days, but it was so hard that they could not get a good biopsy. Rather than waste our money on a lab fee for a possibly unreadable slide, our vet’s gut told her to just take it out. We were going to have to wait to schedule the surgery a couple weeks out, after we thought we’d have our tax refund back. But Dusty’s owner, Nick, my husband’s son, came through while being away at college and fronted us his school sustenance money. She was in surgery within a week. When we got the call that it was cancer (sarcoma tumor) after it was removed and sent to the lab the next week for diagnosis, we were just shocked! The vet said they removed it all during the surgery, which is amazing because the Internet revealed that these types of tumors have spider-like legs growing in all directions out from the center. They also removed another nearby fatty growth while they were removing the tumor, just in case. We had no idea that she had a tumor where that fatty growth used to be located, let alone that it was malignant. Sometime during the past three months it had hardened and turned cancerous. Thank God for early detection because Dusty was active enough to be sore from hiking, so I could be rubbing her down and actually find it in time. Also thank God for the financial means to pay for it . . . Dusty is fine now, after two weeks of rest and wearing the “lampshade” until she got her stitches out. She’s gone back to hiking this week, building her strength up relatively rapidly. Maybe she’ll even be able to do Mt. Jupiter again this year! She didn’t even know she had a short battle with cancer. Thank God!!