Baron’s Diagnosis: Chronic Active Proliferative and Necro-ulcerative Glossitis – A.K.A. NOT CANCER!!!

You'd think that was a Magnum-sized paw...

That’s right – my little man is free of the big “C” and will live to fight another day!   

The waiting was absolute agony – for those of you whose lives have not come to a screeching halt since the big “c” was uttered, it has been ONE WEEK today.  I have not left the house (or Baron’s side) since the surgery.  For the first few days he was doing really well – despite literally being stitched from tongue to tail and having a huge bandage on his right front paw.  I took him to work with me on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and then sat with him all day Sunday.  Oh and let’s not forget my $155 trip to PetCo to purchase Bear-bear a new “premium” diet, a new fluffy bed, a $12 plush walrus toy, a new stylish little harness for when he can actuallly walk again, new stainless steel bowls, and any other little Bear-bear toy or accessory I thought he might need.  And I even went all doggie-mommy-nazi on the girl at the checkout counter who tried to give Baron a treat…  He can’t have any hard food since he had a tooth extracted during his teeth cleaning, so when she offered the treat up to him, I slapped it right out of her hand and down to the ground.  Rude?  Probably.  But hey listen, I have not been spending thirty minutes every night soaking dog kibble in warm water and grinding it up with the magic bullet to have my efforts foiled by some willy-nilly PetCo check out girl!  (p.s. I think I got a tiny glimpse of what you Mommies are feeling when people offer your kids candy and crap like that…)  We have been restricting his movement (not easy) and wrapping his little paw in a ziploc bag when he goes outside to keep his bandage dry.  And I have maintained a very regimented pain med and anitbiotic dosing schedule – long story short, I have been doing everything I can possibly think of to make his recovery easier.   

Against alllllll of my rationality and better judgement, I did make the mistake of breaking down and Googling things like “tumors in dog’s mouths” and other various fun phrases.  Yeah, ummm…  Googling is not a good plan for something like that.  After I read like 2-3 articles I was in hysterics and convinced that Baron may keel over dead at any moment.  Post-Google it became “Doxie Death Watch 2010″ in my house.  Not fun.   

I was totally useless at work too.  Everytime someone would call about their dog’s issue I would begrudgingly help them while thinking, “you selfish a-hole!  Your problem does not even COMPARE to my dog’s!  How DARE you call up here and bother me with such trivial situations!”  And then I would log on to the Lab website and check to see if Baron’s results had been posted.  And for a WEEK there was nothin’.  Well, there was an “In Progress”, which in my mind of course meant, “we’ll get to it when we’re good and freakin’ ready and you can just sit there and suffer and continue Death Watch 2K10.”  

Since I was taking him to work with me, every night before bed I would prepare Baron’s bag, which contained his two prescriptions, his pill pockets for his prescriptions, ziploc bag for his foot along with cloth hair scrunchie to wrap around said ziploc bag, his collar, his leash, his e-collar (a.k.a. the lamp shade), and his new fluffy walrus.  In addition to all of that, I had his bed and his magic blanket (the one that he was wrapped in when he recovered from Christmas Day ’08 ass-chompin’).  So I would load all of that stuff into the car and then come back to get Baron.  Between all of that stuff, Baron, and my purse and coffee cup, I made like 30 trips to and from the car upon my arrival at work each day.   

Monday I was going to try to be a big girl and leave Baron at home, but at the last minute I just couldn’t do it.  So I loaded up all of his stuff again and took him in.  And it’s a good thing I did because as it turns out, his bandage needed to be changed that day anyway.  (Thanks for that memo, Doc!)  Sunday night I had a feeling that something was wrong and that’s why I took him in Monday, so I was not surprised when we took the bandage off and his little toes were absolutely RAW.  I’ll spare you the details, but it was nasty and very easy to see why Baron had been in such misery the night before.  The doc said that once the bandage was changed he should stop messing with it and that he’d get some relief, so when he was still ravenous to get at his little mitten yesterday at lunch, I knew the damn bandage needed to come off.  I soaked his little paw in an antibacterial wash and put the stupid lampshade on his head and about an hour later it looked at least 300% better.  

I was totally preparing myself to spend today, my day off, in limbo for another day, but on a crazy whim at 5:30 last night I logged on to the Lab website to check one last time…  What did I see?  “One new lab result.  Baron Collett Histopathology:  Results Final.”  I immediately blurted out “OhMyGodOhMyGodOhMyGodOhMyGod….”, crapped my pants, and went running back to the treatment area where the doctor was.  I’m not even sure what I said to her, but I do know that the jist of it was that the results for Baron are final and I don’t know what any of it means – can you please look?  I also know that I wanted to smack her like a dog treat out of a PetCo employee’s hand when she didn’t stop what she was doing and look at Baron’s results immediately.  I had to stand there sweating with anticipation while she tinkered around with whatever the fuck she was doing  for another three minutes.  I mean SERIOUSLY?!  I’ve been in pre-cardiac arrest for a WEEK – you’re really gonna make me stand here for three more minutes?!  In the mean time, one of my precious coworkers had come back into the treatment area and said, “Umm  I don’t think it’s bad…”  to which I immediately snapped, “DON’T!”  because the truth was I had seen enough of the result to know that I didn’t see the words “cancer” or “malignant” anywhere and I thought that everything looked good too…  I was just so afraid that there was some fancy doctor word that I had missed and that could still make the results bad.   

By the time the Doc leisurely strolled over to the computer to look at the results, I had taken lamp-shade boy out of his condo in the treatment area and was holding him while pacing back and forth, and the two girls who I’ve been driving crazy about this for the last week were all assembled in the treatment area when the doctor FINALLY uttered the words, “no signs of cancer seen”.  BREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEATHE!!!!!!!!!  I just had to hide my face behind Bear-bear’s lampshade for ONE second to hide some happy tears and then I could finally breathe a sigh of relief.  My little boy is gonna be ok. 

As it turns out, that the nasty thing in his foot was caused by some sort of foreign body that had gotten wedged in between his little toes, and the thing in his mouth was Chronic Active Proliferative and Necro-ulcerative Glossitis, which apparently is caused by some a residual bacterial infection OR TRAUMA….  ummmm does anyone remember that part of the post where I talked about how Baron had “facial paralysis due to trauma”?  Yeah well that was on the left side of his face and I am convinced that they are related.   

By the time I stopped reeling from the incredibly good news, it was time to close up for the day.  I loaded Baron into the car and rolled down the window for him on the way home.  This was a great idea in theory, and I really wanted Baron to share in the excitement of the good news, but imagine holding a lampshade against the wind out of your car window…  I tried to go slow, but every now and then the wind would catch the lamp shade just right and his little Bear-bear head would go flying back…  so while he doesn’t have cancer, he may or may not have whiplash.  He LOVED every second of it though.   

The only thing we’ll have to deal with now is covering his little paw when he goes outside.  The ziploc bag is really not ideal because the way the plastic folds up at the top of his two inch legs it rubs right against all of his stitches and he tries to walk by sticking his leg straight out.  It is mildly hilarious because he looks like a little Third Reich soldier, but I also know that it is really uncomfortable for him.  So last night after a celebratory cocktail (or five) we found ourselves brainstorming about what would work better for covering up his little paw.  The conclusion that we naturally drew was a condom.  Roll that sucker on there, no muss, no fuss, no plastic rubbing the stitches, no rubber band around the leg – perfect!  So after fighting off my natural inclination to think that Baron would have some kind of latex allergy that would send him into anaphylactic shock, I searched the local Walgreens for unlubricated Magnums.  (For those that are curious, they don’t exist.)  So to end the week from hell, at 1 a.m. last night I was washing lubricant off of a Trojan in my kitchen sink and subsequently rolling it onto my dog’s wounded paw.  Apparently Baron is not quite Magnum-sized, because the damn thing came off as soon as he started running back inside.  It was too dark to find it last night, so there is a de-lubed condom tumbling around somewhere in my back yard, but there’s a cancer-free puppy in this house and I couldn’t be happier!   

p.s. thank you so much to everyone for all of the support – you guys definitely made the week from hell easier.  Baron & I love you all!  xoxo 

 Baron and his Walrus. Goo goo g’joob.