Oh Gracy!

Gracy is my 5 year old schnauzer/black lab mix.  I adopted her from the Humane Society at the end of August 2007.  I remember walking up to the kennel and wondering if she really belonged to that litter.  All of the other pups were classic looking black lab puppies.  Gracy was the only one, or at least only one left, that had that classic wire hair on her face.  I fell in love immediately!  My heart was in it 110%!  My mind was still not convinced.  That whole "black lab" thing was weighing heavy up there.  Not because I don't like labs but because I already had a 1 year old golden retriever at home.  She was big, and still growing.  She was my first big dog and I didn't want two.  I called my ex for some advice, maybe hoping he would talk me out of it.  He didn't.  I couldn't resist her.  She came home with me the next day!  She was just too cute to leave for someone else to swoop away!

Gracy didn't need much training as she learned quickly.  On our first walk, she walked right next to me, while I fought her sister to not drag me down the street.  She did like to chew a lot.  She chewed up my computer cord, pens, highlighters, books, magazines, socks, shoes, roach traps.  You know, the classic puppy stuff.  A few memorable things were my DaVinci Code book, which I was almost done with.  She tore out parts of the last couple of pages....luckily, I was able to work my way through few missed sentences!   Another was a card from the ex that I didn't even realize I still had.  She had found it, taken it outside, and chewed it up all over the back yard.  She got praise for that one!

She is a momma's girl, unless there are rabbits running around the yard or a tennis ball to be played with.  Then her OCD kicks in!  She is always wanting attention and will come between her sister and I to get it!  She has been fun to have around the house.  She is full of energy and talks to me all the time! 

So, fast-forward to March 2011.  One night, while telling her goodnight, I felt a lump in her neck.  Already having had a dog with lymphoma, I new what to look for and would give the girls routine rub downs.  I did not take light of it.  I called her Vet the next morning and took her in.  Unfortunately, we both knew what it was.  However, it took a little over a week to finally determine what it was.  Lymphoma.  Stage 1A.

I was devastated, to say the least.  She would not turn 4 for about two more months.  During that week of not knowing, she had two aspirations of that lymph node, which came back inconclusive.  They actually had to remove her lymph node to get a diagnosis.  She began chemotherapy the day the test results came back.  She was basically in remission the day they took the node, because that was the only place they found the cancer.  Chemo lasted from April to October and for the most part, she tolerated it pretty well.  She was still in remission and their was a small, but good chance, she could beat it since we had found it so early.

In December, she ate a rock!  She had had a few other vomiting issues, but, they had not been consistent.   She had been sick a couple of times that morning and her oncologist wanted to see her.  Many things could have been wrong with her, from eating something to the cancer coming back.  The rock was discovered in the x-ray and we were all overjoyed that it was a rock, even though that could have turned into something serious.  She continued to get sick off and on all winter.

In March of 2012, she started making snorting sounds.  We thought it was just allergies.  It wasn't.  In early May, an x-ray showed a mass in her chest.  The lymphoma was back.........  The mass was pushing on her lung, which caused the snorting sound.  I wasn't expecting that.  My other dog had been in remission for almost 4 years, so, I figured Gracy would too.  Again, I was devasted.  She was given a chemo treatment that night, as well as a round of prednisone to start taking.  By the next morning, the snorting sound was almost gone.  I faintly heard it once.  By the next week, the doctors could not hear it and a follow up x-ray 4 weeks later showed that it was all gone!

By the time her off week came, her vomiting issue had become a major issue.  She was getting sick a lot and before continuing chemo, the vets decided we needed to get that under control.  One week turned into seven weeks.  During this time she had many tests, including exploratory surgery.  She acquired aspiration pneumonia twice, once before the surgery and once after.  She spent three days in ICU with the first bout of pneumonia.  She returned to the hospital for surgery five days later, and then spent ten days in ICU.  Fortunately, they didn't find anything alarming during the surgery.  However, they still, after all of the tests, could not figure out why she was still vomiting, as she had no other symptoms.  So you might ask, what did they treat her for?  A food allergy and visceral epilepsy.

After getting out of the hospital July 11, 2012, she started chemo treatment the next week.  She has progressively improved each day.  In fact, we are at almost five weeks since her last episode of vomiting!  And, only two episodes in 8 weeks!

She had some very down days this summer, as did I.  We never would have made it through them without great friends and family, as well as the wonderful staff, students and doctors who seemed to work tirelessly to help my girl.  A big "THANK YOU" to all of them!