You know you've been coming to a veterinary teaching hospital a lot when you walk up to the front desk and they hand you your file and sign-in sheets before you've even said who you are. Yes, they recognize me by sight now. Uh oh.
I took the photo of our oncologist, Dr. Janean Fidel, examining blind Gabe this afternoon. His MRI is scheduled for tomorrow morning. We won't know until she has a chance to review the images whether we are looking at surgery and radiation, or just radiation. This has to do with the location and size of the tumor, how far it's spread inside his nasal passages, etc. Dr. Fidel also said that sometimes the initial biopsy sample can result in a pathology report of fibrosarcoma, but deeper inside the growth it's actually a different kind of cancer … which can change both the treatment and outcome.
So we'll know much more tomorrow.
Gabe did fine on the trip out from Montana, though he stood up in the back seat the entire time! Only when I stopped for gas did he actually lie down. We had the back seats removed in both trucks and covered the floor with thick, fleece blankets, so it's a very comfy place to snooze — but for some reason he wanted to stand up for the entire 5-hour long drive. Needless to say, by the time we got to WSU, he was one tired boy … and then he promptly went to sleep on the hard linoleum floor of the exam room. I told Gabe he has this whole thing backwards!
—
While I was en route to Pullman, Dr. Jennifer Rockwell called me to say Teddy was doing "fantastic," but that she really couldn't explain the turn-around in his condition. In fact, his glucose level is lower and more stable than it was during his previous long stay at the clinic … and this after the crisis we had with him Sunday evening. His ultrasound is scheduled for tomorrow, and unless our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Britt Culver, finds something new, Jennifer will go ahead and do his dental work. For now, as Jennifer said, the "medical mystery" continues with the little tyke.

Leave a comment