Well, it could have been worse.
Our internal medicine specialist in Helena, Dr. Britt Culver, last Monday put a scope down Gabe's throat to see what was causing his breathing problem, and quickly found the answer: A tumor in his nasopharynx region, where the nasal passages enter the throat. Essentially his nose is blocked at the back end, so not only can he barely breath through his nose, he can't drain any nasal fluids either. And try eating and drinking with your nose closed. Here's what the tumor looks like:
You can see what appears to be a small dark hole remaining near the center … we think he can still get a tiny amount of air through that, but it's very difficult and judging from the sounds he makes, the little hole seems to close up on him frequently.
When our primary care vet, Dr. Jennifer Rockwell, called with the news early last week, she said Britt had indicated that something like 99% of these tumors are cancerous and of those, about 85% are adenocarcinomas. That was very bad news, because the adenocarcinomas are very aggressive, spread quickly, and thus make the prognosis very grim indeed.
So all week we braced for the worst as we waited for the pathology report on the biopsy sample Britt sent in to Colorado State University. On Friday, Jennifer called with the results. It turned out to be better than we were anticipating: His tumor is a fibrosarcoma — a less aggressive cancer. More good news: It's a Grade 1 tumor, the lowest of three grades, so it isn't growing and spreading as fast as a Grade 2 or 3 tumor. And finally, Jennifer said our radiologist in Spokane found no evidence in the X-rays of the cancer spreading to his chest or abdomen. (Our clinic electronically sends the digital X-rays to the radiologist for review.)
During the week Jennifer had been in touch with our oncologist at Washington State University, Dr. Janean Fidel, who had treated blind Callie for her brain tumor. With the pathology results, Dr. Fidel told Jennifer on Friday that she believed a combination of surgery and radiation could give Gabe a few more years of life. But … but … they'd first need to do a CT scan or MRI to get a better idea of the location of the tumor to see how viable surgery was as an option and how they would do the follow-up radiation. Thus until we do the advanced imaging, we don't know for sure what our treatment options are.
So this week I will be scheduling an appointment for Gabe to see Dr. Fidel at WSU … and we'll go from there. All in all, we have reason to hope for a more positive outcome than we did a week ago — but please keep your fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, Gabe is delighted to be back home. I took the photo this morning of him in our living room. Like Teddy, it looks as if Gabe got to us just in time.
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Speaking of Teddy, he's doing okay. I'd like to say he's doing "great" but we don't have his glucose level regulated yet. He's all over the map, like he was at the vet clinic, so we have been adjusting his insulin doses to try and hit the magic number. He's been as high as 505 and — as of this afternoon — as low as 230, so we are still quite a way from the target 100. But he's eating and drinking well, and in the best sign of all, he's starting to get bossy again. [Imagine a tiny, high-pitched "Woof! Woof!"]
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Since I mentioned Callie in this post, I'd better say right now that she is — finally — really starting to become her old self again. It's been a long slog but she's coming back, which is such a relief.
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