Our beautiful blue-eyed 12-year old Siberian Husky, Sebastian, is scheduled to undergo a full amputation of his front left leg (up through the shoulder) tomorrow. He has been suffering from a large mass on his leg for the past number of months which has continually grown and gotten gnarlier and gnarlier over time. Last Wednesday, he underwent a biopsy to determine what caused this issue and yesterday we received a diagnosis of Soft Tissue Sarcoma. Our veterinarian believes that amputating the leg will “cure” the cancer as it’s not the type that usually metastasizes. Since the biopsy, the incision site has literally ruptured open, through the sutures, into an ugly mess that looks like we took a handful of raw ground sausage and threw it on his leg – there’s exposed flesh, tendons, and a bunch of other “bits” that my non-veterinary-school-trained-eyes can’t really identify, but I can say with certainty that it doesn’t look like it’d ever heal left to it’s own devices as the necrotic tissue is overflowing from the wound site. When presented with the difficult choice of either euthanasia or amputation, the decision became clear that amputation was by far the best option given what I’ve read about how well dogs do with amputation and how quickly they recover. Surprisingly to me, this is being approached as an outpatient surgery and he is expected to be back home with us tomorrow afternoon. I’m nervous, anxious and optimistic all at the same time. Fingers crossed that the surgeon knows what he’s doing, that Sebastian pulls through the procedure without any issues with the anesthesia and that he returns very quickly to being the lovely, handsome Sebastian he’s always been… just with 3-legs instead of 4 as we’ve gotten used to seeing him. During the research I did about canine amputees, I read a quote that I can’t quite track down right now to give credit to the proper person, but to summarize, the message was that dogs are incredibly adaptable and are actually, “3-legged creatures who happen to have an extra leg initially.” I’m hoping there’s some serious truth to that statement and that he is hopping along, harassing his canine siblings, and chasing bunnies in no time.
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