Background

If you are reading this, you likely know at least a portion of Audrey's ordeal. I have created this blog to document her progress. Here is a little background.

A couple of months ago we noticed that she was limping. Thinking it was just a strained muscle, we ignored it. After a week it only got worse so we took her to the vet, who diagnosed a possible torn ACL, but wanted us to try anti-inflammatories for a two weeks before looking into surgery. Two weeks later, the limping was worse so we scheduled surgery. She went in on August 27th for surgery to repair her ACL. When the doctor opened up her leg, she noticed some tissue that didn't look normal, and the bone was eaten up by a tumor. She took out some of the tissue for a biopsy and closed the leg back up -- it could not be saved. The doctor explained to us that if Audrey had osteosarcoma (a cancer of the bone), there was not a lot of hope because it is an aggressive tumor that metastasize quickly into the lungs and lymph nodes. Alternatively, it could be synovial cell sarcoma or fibrosarcoma (both tissue tumors that invade the bone). These are less agressive tumors that do not typically metastasize to other organs. We understood that if it was osteosarcoma, we would face the decision of putting her down. If it was not osteosarcoma, we then faced amputation of her leg. So we waited for the pathology results, and waited. Unfortunately, this happened all over Labor Day weekend so it was Wednesday, September 3rd before we got word that it was not osteosarcoma.

She went in for amputation on Thursday, September 4th. The surgery went well - no complications.