Addie’s story: 7 year old lab mix, osteosarcoma (almost a year with NO SPREAD)
We were on a family vacation in June and the dogsitter sent me a picture of Addie’s back right leg – she had some swelling on the inside of her ankle. I told her to no longer take her on walks and that I would schedule with the vet if it was still swollen when we returned.
When we returned, the swelling was still there. We took her in to the vet and got some X-Rays done just out of caution. When the vet returned to the room with Addie, she brought very unexpected news. This looked like an osteosarcoma. We should consider amputation. We should consider pain meds. At this point, Addie was not even limping. I couldn’t believe it. In fact, I didn’t.
June/July 2022
The vet gave us pain meds and we did not give them. Addie seemed perfectly fine. We got a puppy and I started working from home. Our philosophy was that we wanted her to have a good last few months of her life without intervention. We would put her down once the pain became unbearable.
Fast forward to August, September, October, November and December… Addie was running around like normal. No issues. Swelling went down. No vet visits. Nothing. We did not expect she would be around for Christmas! We went ahead with a blood test to rule out a fungal infection. This came back negative. We kept keeping on.
January 2023
Mid-January 2023, the swelling started to come back and Addie started to limp again. It seemed to get progressively worse to the point where I started giving her the pain meds and stopped taking her out. We went to the vet to follow up and got more X-Rays. The X-Rays looked exactly the same. No improvement and no progression. Same report from radiology. Likely osteosarcoma.
The vets were baffled! They had never seen an osteosarcoma behave this way before. Surely if this were cancer, something would have progressed by now (7 months!). The next step was a biopsy. We moved forward with this. Biopsy was done and the histopathologists were unable to make a solid diagnosis. With two opinions, the report came back as “suspected osteosarcoma”. Post biopsy, Addie never really got better. She never used her leg again and it seemed to get worse each day.
The vet spoke with the oncologist and the oncologist informed her that the cell behavior that was reported could be associated fibrosarcoma or chondrosarcoma. Either way, this was causing our girl so much pain and she was no longer able to live a happy life. If it was either of these cancers, they spread slowly and amputation could give her another few years of a happy life.
March 2023
After a chest Xray and bloodwork to rule out spread, we moved forward with amputation. I was extremely hesitant and it broke my heart to think about. Addie is my soul dog and my best friend! Of course I want more time with her, but I want that time to be happy for her. It’s a balance between selfishness of wanting her here and the quality of life she will live.
Her leg was sent off to histopathology for further examination with more tissues. The diagnosis is osteosarcoma. The cancer did not spread to even local lymph sites! All those involved cannot believe it. They have never seen a case like this, as dogs are usually barely getting 6 months to a year with amputation and chemo. The doc said that normally by the time they even detect this, it has already spread. Not with Addie (that they can detect at least)!
She is currently recovering (12 days post op) and doing better each day. She is definitely not herself yet, but seems to be headed that way. I hope that in a week or so I start to see her happy go lucky self come out again.
So proud of this dog and all that she has handled in the past few months! Hoping for some full years ahead for this new tripawd.
Thank you for reading our story!