River’s Story

Hi Everyone,

This is Maggie. I am mom to River, a wonderfully goofy, buddha reincarnate, black lab mastiff mix. If you are reading this than you are probably super scared like I was four months ago when River got his first diagnosis. I just wanted to share here a little bit about our story, in hopes to spread hope for mom’s and dad’s of pup’s with osteosarcoma, and also just to add to the amazing stories that I found here that helped me through the last few months of making some tough decisions.

River is 11 years old. He was a stray that I adopted from the Miami-Dade pound when he was 2 1/2 year’s old, we have been inseparable ever since. You can check out more on our story at www.riverwanders.com. The only reason I know he is a mastiff mix if from a dna test we did a few years back, and now I know that dogs of this size (92lbs) an breed are much more prone to cancers like osteosarcoma.

River’s pain started with a limp in his front right leg. He had had this limp a few times before so I brought him to the vet thinking he had pulled a usual muscle or had some arthritis. When the usual medicines didn’t work, and I asked the Vet for prednisone and that didn’t work, i knew something was up and we brought him in for x-rays. This is when we found the bone lesion.

The bone lesion leads to the scariest week or two of your life…. because basically the vet tells you that it is probably bone cancer, but that the bone cancer could have come (metastasized) from somewhere else in the body, and so the exploration begins. The first step is to xray the lungs to make sure it hasn’t spread there. I am a big believer in the power of positive thought and prayer so while these xrays were taking place I spent the day in deep mediation, calling on all my spiritual sisters for prayer and visualizing the best results possible…. no cancer… not in his lungs… At the end of the day we got the best news possible, that there were no visible lung spots.

Next step…. go to the specialists. We went to AVS (Affiliated Veterinary Specialists) in Maitland Florida. Dr Goodson was great and empathetic and open to all questions. Here they look at the xrays… tell you it is probably bone cancer and that they have to do bloodwork and ultrasound the internal organs to make sure there are no visible signs of spreading throughout the body or lesions in other organs (approx $800). This is all to determine whether or not you even want to treat your pet for the cancer. 🙁 saddest…. scariest…. worst….. but again another opportunity to pray, think positive, manifest the results, call on the network of prayer. At the end of this visit, we got the best worst news ever….. There was no visible sign of spreading, but that it was still most likely osteosarcoma (bone cancer) which involves intense, quick, invasive treatment.

1. Radiation – most expensive (8K)- less effective – goal is to mitigate pain will not reverse bone deterioration
2. Chemo – less expensive (2.5K) – effective – will not reverse bone deterioration
3. Bone Biopsy – invasive, painful, still expensive, used to determine if it is cancer, results could still be amputation (1.5K)
4. Amputation + Chemo – most effective at mitigating pain and slowing the cancer growth (2.5K surgery) (2.5k chemo and follow ups)

Scariest decision ever, but we had to move quick, because time is of the essence at this stage in the game. We decided to do the amputation and chemo. Even though the biopsy would have provided us more information, I wanted to make sure we were not wasting any more of River’ precious time on earth.

We live alone in Florida, so even though I felt completely comfortable with the vets here, we decided to go home to Rhode Island for the surgery and the recovery process. It is important that you have a support system around you for this part since your pup will require a lot of round the clock care, as well as keeping your human psychological well-being in mind.

We had a brief moment of hope when the doctor in Rhode Island thought it may be a fungal infection due to our travel to the southwestern states…. they can pick up fungus that causes bone infection there. However we did this test and it came back negative. so we had to move forward with the amputation.

Unfortunately, our vet surgeon in Rhode Island was booked up for weeks, and I wanted to move quickly with the surgery, so we went to another specialist. I cannot say this was a mistake because we really liked the surgeon, however they severely botched the administering of the pain meds in the after care of his amputation, and nearly killed him. I don’t want to scare anyone, but please make sure you ask the right questions and chose the right hospital for this type of procedure. Looking back now I wish I had waited the extra two weeks for my surgeon to become available. However if you have to make sure you stress the importance of your dogs care, and ask questions about what pain meds will be administered and who will be observing your pet after the operation.

We were very very worried about how River wold accommodate to having the front right leg amputation. Dogs carry 70% of weight on their front legs. Not to mention he is an older dog as well as on the larger side of the spectrum. They don’t let the pet leave until they can walk on their own. (They will be able to don’t worry).

River left the vet the next day after surgery. He was hopping very slowly on this own with the sling. My brother and I loaded him into the back of the car and brought him home that day.

Please see the next blog post for recovery.