Lexi

I wanted to share a story as this site helped me in so many ways with information and it gave me hope.
We had a Great Dane…Lexi…that was diagnosed with a possible osteosarcoma in Aug 2015. Amputation was the first thing the doctors told us, but trying to imagine her making it on 3 legs at 130 pounds was impossibly for me. I spoke with her previous vet and she advised against it because of her size and I will be honest, she wasn’t the most graceful dog. She was still using the leg, so we were prescribed gabapentin and deramaxx. They gave us a 3 to 6 month prognosis, so we let her live and live as happy as possible. She never really showed pain and we kept up with the progression of deterioration with xrays. At 5 monts, the bone was useless and she really wasn’t using it any longer. We then amputated, confirmed osteosarcoma from a bone biopsy as we couldn’t get any cells through the needle, and she did well. She was back up in a week. That week broke my heart though. She has always been a dog so full of energy that it was hard to watch her struggle and made me question my decision. We made it through though and she gained strength and because we waited, she learned to hop on 3 legs before the amputation. I did not do chemo as this disease was incurable and it would have made a darker black cloud hanging over our heads on time. Lexi thrived and was so happy. She fell a couple of times, but not many and I built her confidence back up each time. This past weekend she took a spill on tile and had trouble breathing after. At 2am I took her to the vet and found she had a pneumothorax due to the fall and the cancer. They took the air off of the outside of her lungs, monitored her and sent her home with us at 4pm. She seemed fine. Was able to lay down and was breathing through her nose. No panting, spit or frothing. After 2 nights though, i knew something was wrong again. Went back to the vet only to hear the same diagnosis. We were then faced with that horrible decision I never wanted to ever make. We decided to take her out of pain on 5/16/16. We were able to spend a wonderful 20-30 mins with her acting happy and just as she always did. I again questioned why I was doing what was fixing to happen and felt like a horrible person all the while enjoying the love and kisses from her…..then she laid down and the air had filled back up and i knew i had to take her out of pain. The hole in her lung from where a cancer nodule had burst would never heal. It is with a broken heart that i type all this, but as i said in the beginning, i learned so much from this site and thought Lexi’s story could maybe help someone else one day. I lost my best friend, but let her live as much as possible while she was here. Cancer…you SUCK!