Life As I Know It

Short post today as I'm at work, but the doctor from K-State just called Jim to let him know that the autopsy was finished on Hunter. He said that he had hemangiosarcoma which started as a small tumor and grew very rapidly. The first tumor showed up probably 1-3 months ago which we were surprised that it was such a short period of time. He started coughing in mid-May though so that was two months before he died and I guess that would probably make sense...it probably started in April and then spread to enough places and got bad enough that he started coughing in May. Anyways, he had cancer in his eye, lungs, thyroid, heart, brain, kidney and lymphnodes. Needless to say he was a very sick dog and we can definitely say that we made the absolute best decision for him. After doing some research online, I found that we are pretty lucky that it ended the way it did as most dogs do not show any clinical signs until it's too late and they die from internal bleeding. I am very glad that Hunter did not go that way as I think that would have been even harder. And I'll give a little bit of credit to our vet as one of the sites I looked at did say that hemangiosarcoma is often mistaken for immune mediated hemolytic anemia because the type of anemia caused by the two conditions is very similar and early clinical signs are often very similar; since that is what they thought was wrong with Hunter I guess they get a little break in my book. The good news is Hunter was probably not in any pain before he died and he didn't have to suffer much. That's it for now...