Lincoln and his drama

To preface: Lincoln's a happy dog - jumping off the patio to go chase things, sleeping most of the day, stealing (and eating) a loaf of bread from the bread box (which was on the counter and closed!) every chance he gets.

He doesn't know there is anything wrong with him...except he coughs a couple times a day. If you want the bottom line first, skip to the bottom of this paragraph . If you want the whole story, read on. He coughed occasionally last summer, then stopped (whether that's related or not is unknown.) About 3 months ago we noticed him coughing again, in the the last 6 weeks it had progressed to being a couple times daily so I took him to his wonderful vet. She was thinking allergies, but we chose to do an xray - it showed a significant white area (dense things like organs and bones show up white, air- like healthy lung - shows up black.) She said it was out of her realm to diagnose and sent us to the vet specialist. The specialist looked at the xrays and said it was a tumor. (For those of you who have seen the huge fatty tumor on this shoulder/chest -that's not it. This one is in his lung -inside his chest.) In order to know what kind of tumor, he needed an ultasound guided biopsy (using an ultrasound - how they look at babies - to guide the needle to get some cells from the tumor - kind of like drawing blood, except from the tumor instead of a vein.) The ultrasound showed it is about 9cm ~4inches. The results came back yesterday. He has a carcinoma. Cancer.

She said the definitive cure is surgery to remove that lobe of his lung. That's very painful for humans and while I don't know how much it would hurt a dog, I can't imagine it's comfortable and if it has metastasized (spread) it wouldn't do anything about the other places. Plus he's a pretty old dog. He'll be 9 on October 24th - which is old for a 115lb dog. Surgery is big ordeal - especially the older you are. For these reasons, we decided that was not the best option to keep him the happy dog that he is now.

The next best option in her opinion is a couple drugs (we also chose against chemo due to the side effects - once again the goal to keep him happy) that have minimal side effects and may or may not work to keep the tumor from growing or possibly shrink it. One is an antibiotic that also keeps new blood vessels from forming - essentially cutting off the nutrition to the tumor. The other is a pain medicine that is also an anti-inflammatory and apparently has properties that protect against cancer - so it may attack what is already there or keep it from getting bigger. We'll give him these for a while, then do another xray to see if anything has changed, then decide to continue them or not. She was reluctant to say how long until he's symptomatic other than an occasional cough, but did tell Andy that there were lots of dead cells - which means it has probably been there for a while and it fairly slow growing. Our regular vet has a doggy radiologist friend that she's going to do an unofficial consult with and get a second opinion to make sure that this is the best option.

This post is the best I can do to talk about it for the moment, but I keep telling myself (and you) that Lincoln is his regular, happy self and just wishes that we'd stop giving him bad haircuts and poking needles in him. Which is true.

$35 technically- but I got $21 extra care bucks and a $10 gift card so that's $4!! One of my best deals yet :-)

Oh and Andy got a cool Auburn Coca-Cola t-shirt from MyCokeRewards.

Guess how much...

Thanks Aunt Christian for my shirt

Expedia rocks!

I booked a plane ticket for my mom last night for $182 - ouch...it was supposedly $75ish (+taxes) last week when USAir was doing some sort of sale, but the sale was over, she needed that ticket, so I booked it. For whatever reason I checked the price again today and it was $85. For the EXACT same ticket! I called USAir and the first lady was very polite, but basically said, "I can change it for you, but there's a $150 change fee so that wouldn't really be a good choice. Write the complaint people and see if they can do anything for you." Yeah...wrote that email, then started wondering if I could just buy the second ticket, not show up for the first ticket's flight, and get a credit for the first ticket. The "unused ticket" info on the site said, "Call customer service." The second guy was just a jerk, but he made the comment that I booked it through a 3rd party, blah, blah and that I could only get a $182 credit and then pay another $150 to use the credit later. 3rd party? The hamster is starting to jog..."Ah, yes, I did use expedia....Hmmm...I wonder if they can do anything...they've at least given me coupons in the past when something didn't work out well." So...I checked their website and they have a 24 hour price guarantee!!! I just called, told the lady the fare on USAir was $85 today, she verified it, put me on hold forever, then came back to say there was a $98 credit being sent to my credit card and I would get a $50 credit in my expedia account!! I think it may have even been 25 hours since I bought the first one (though I don't remember exactly what time I bought it.) While I always liked them (and their coupons!) Expedia just moved up on my list of favorite things...so I'm feeling like a bit of free advertising for them tonight.