About me!
Jun 11th, 2011 by Lylee Girl
Photo: Lylee and her Mum (on our local beach, Bodega Bay, CA)
Our Lylee Girl (12-ish German Shepherd mix) is such a sweet, beautiful girl. We adopted her in December, 2000 from a shelter in Sonoma County, CA. And she was the “One”. Her Mum was on a silent retreat just before she found her and she saw an image of Lylee’s face while on that retreat. She loves her beach walks, saving the world from evil kelp seaweed, hikes on the fire trails in the hills and being with her family: her Mum & Dad, 2 kitties, Arabella and Wildman and a new brother, Mr. Happy.
This is her unfolding journey about her right front leg. She had a previous fracture of the humerus last year (2010), two bone biopsies were negative for cancer. The bone healed well after two grueling surgeries and a very long rehab period but got back to her fabulous beach walks and long hikes. Lylee has been a very healthy girl all her life with only having to have routine health stuff and her teeth cleaned. She did have to have a tooth extracted earlier this year, so, apart from her leg she has been very active and well.
Unfortunately she is really going through a tough time at the moment. We have had many visits to the vet trying to get to the cause of new lameness in her right front leg that started the beginning of May of this year (2011).
First 2 visits to her regular vet and lots of x rays showing nothing conclusive, (they thought it might be arthritis). But the pain was increasing so we went to an orthopedic surgeon, who also initially didn’t see anything worrisome. So she said come back for repeat x rays in 4-6 weeks. But her pain was getting unbearable, 2 days after seeing the surgeon we were maxing out her pain meds (carprofen, tramadol), the surgeon, who is part of a large specialist group and emergency hospital, sowe said we have to see you right away! The surgeon was in surgery with 2 major procedures that afternoon but said come and see an emergency vet. We did and had a fentanyl patch applied and set an appointment for the next day.
She repeated the x-rays and the radiologist with the hospital read them and unfortunately there was an area on the humerus above all the hardware from the fracture repair that is very suspicious and looks like a tumour :((
The surgeon said it definitely was a new diagnosis, not connected in anyway to the fracture; bones don’t heal when cancer is present and her’s did (so she could subsequently charge around the beach, etc for the last 9/10 months 🙂 Her lungs look very good when x-rayed.
We need to do more tests to know what to do next. Stay tuned. We’ll let you know how we fare.
Love and huggs to everyone 🙂
Hello. I just saw Lylee’s picture on tripawds.com and I almost fell off of my chair. Our smooth-coat collie/malamute mix, “Larry” bares a striking resemblance to Lylee. Larry has surgery schedule 06/04/13 to have his right front leg amputated (just like Lylee). His current diagnosis is chondrosarcoma, but unfortunately as I understand it osteosarcoma can’t be ruled out until a larger bone sample can be biopsied. I’ll be setting up a blog for Larry this weekend of which I’ll post some pictures of Lylee’s brother from another.
Best wishes to you!