First there were four… now there will be three

I didn’t get much sleep last night between Cory’s snoring and my mind’s inability to shut the hell up I tossed and turned. What was the surgeon going to say? What are our next steps? Will Maggie be okay? Oh yeah, I’ve got to hire a moving truck for the week of Christmas. Oh yeah, my final paper for class is due tomorrow – I haven’t started it because I wasted my weekend. I have a huge project at work that is going to be rolled out soon – am I ready? I mean – it goes on and on.

All this being said, top of my mind was Maggie.

You’re not all here to read about my craziness but I think you’re here to read about Maggie’s next step.

We met with Dr. Nieves at BluePearl Hospital in Waltham, MA this morning. This is next door to the oncology office she will be going to post-op. I knew I liked Dr. Nieves the moment I met her. Right after she introduced herself she said, “She’s only 5. This really sucks.” I appreciated her sentiment. Dr. Nieves explained what will happen and what the recovery is like.

First, here’s what we are doing. On December 21 we will be amputating Maggie’s left front leg. The amputation takes the entire leg and scapula. She will stay the night at the hospital and we can pick her up on Saturday, December 22 in the morning. I wish I could stay with her that night so she knows she’s okay but I can’t.

Recovery will be a bit of a process. She will send Maggie home and will see her one week and two weeks post-op. Maggie will be on Gabapentin for a month. This will help with the pain and more specifically two weeks out this will help alleviate any phantom pain. Dr. Nieves said that dogs can suffer from phantom pain and start screaming uncontrollably. The Gabapentin will hopefully mitigate this and Maggie won’t have to suffer that fate.

Maggie will also be given a Help-Me-Up harness which will be used mostly at the beginning until she gets her bearings and learns to walk on three legs. Dr. Nieves says even if Maggie struggles at first with walking she will eventually take to it as all dogs do. She did mention that Maggie seems to have heart and will be determined so this makes me happy to hear.

After her amputation we will work with Dr. Rinaldi at NEVOG for her chemotherapy and a drug study where they have a vaccine that is showing promising results in terms of slowing the metastatic disease. I’m a bit hopeful but trying not to hold onto that hope too tightly.

I’ll follow up tomorrow or Thursday with more reflection and more detail on this but I figured I’d report to you guys.

Thank you to everyone who has reached out with kind words. It means a lot. It’s made me cry a lot. It seems the overwhelming message I’m hearing is that Maggie is lucky to have me as a mom. Personally, I consider myself extremely lucky to have Maggie as my pup. She’s best fucking dog in the world and doesn’t deserve to have this. I wish this wasn’t happening.