Cautiously Optimistic

We packed up ourselves and Arrow this morning for a ride that seemed to take forever. In fact, I could have stayed in the car all morning because I did not want to have the vet look at her hairless elbow and tell us that her tumor had returned. Too many decisions, to many memories came flooding each time I thought about hearing "her myxosarcoma is back and there is not much for us to do."

We arrived at Tufts about 15 minutes early (when are we ever early??). We stayed in the car and made some phone calls (had to call our heating company to find out why our bill was ridiculously expensive, had to call US Air and cancel the credit card which had promised companion tickets, but turned out to be pretty much a scam--but I digress). Then we ventured in to the office. Arrow tugged backwards a little with her leash. She knew where she was going and I don't think she felt too good about it either.

The oncology intern (or tech--didn't really know what her role was) came out to pick up Arrow. She clearly knew her and remembered her from her ordeal a couple of months ago. She gave her lots of kisses (the woman kissed Arrow -- Not the other way around). She looked at her elbow and said, "ew, what is that?" At least that is what it sounded like. Before she took Arrow back to the treatment area she told us how they would let her hang out with them during treatment and she would just stay with them, but as soon as they turned away from her, she would nudge them with her little nose saying, "please, pet me!"

After about an hour in the waiting room Dr. Lee, her radiation oncologist came out and said, "Arrow looks great. That thing on her arm is really unusual. We have no idea what it is." He went on to say that they aspirated the tumor and didn't see any cancer cells. He would be very surprised if it was a recurrence. And it isn't a Mast cell tumor as those are easy to detect under the microscope. She definitely has an infection so she is not free and clear of problems. His concern is that she was on 10 days of antibiotics and "Spot" is still active. We decided to let him biopsy Spot so that we could know if it was a tumor (under the infection-- again, he highly doubts that). We should know the results by Friday. Sally and I being the public health geeks that we are, are concerned that she has MRSA and will have to be on IV antibiotics.

She is our own little medical mystery, but we feel like we're going to be able to keep her around for awhile longer!