The woods are deep and dark

Not really sure where to start today...things seem to be happening fast and it's hard to keep up.

Let's recap...We took PG to the surgical center last Monday evening, on Tuesday they did a CT scan among other things, and determined she had a huge mass in her thigh. I came home from work that evening and found one of our two large goldfish (Thelma) dead on the bottom of the acquarium. Not much later we get the call from the surgeon giving us a complete doom and gloom prognosis for PG's surgery on Wednesday, we were scared to death.

We both took Wednesday off and drove down to Ventura to see her before she went under the knife (in case it was the last time we see her). Her surgery isn't scheduled until sometime after noon, so we drive back home and wait. About 3:30pm we get the call....she came thru surgery fine, and they sucked out almost half a liter of blood clot from a bleeding tumor, (which had now stopped bleeding thankfully). So they stitched her back together after taking a few biopsies of the tumor (and some other items of interest). We are relieved beyond words, the surgeon thought the tumor might have been a 'fatty' tumor (PG had a large fatty blob tumor removed about a year ago..benign).

Thursday comes and goes, she is recovering fine, no news is good news.

Friday I come home from work and Louise (the other large goldfish) is also now dead on the bottom of the aquarium. VERY strange. Not much later we get another call from the surgeon, TOTAL doom and gloom. The biopsies are back, all a malignant something sarcoma, no sense taking the leg at this point as the blood clot was all the way up into the pelvis (and all the blood that leaked out the tumor could very likely have tumor cells in it, thus spreading it wherever it went). She talked about us seeing the oncologist on Monday, discussed 2 possible radiation treatment plans (both expensive and both almost impossible for us to do, being as we live 100 miles away from the oncologist, and we both have jobs). We are devastated...it seemed like she had no chance...

Saturday morning I go for a bike ride to clear my brain...the surgeon calls back and talks to Jeannie...wanted to make sure we understood some points: there is no sense doing anything (radiation or otherwise) until after we see if she gets the use of her leg/foot back (she has lost feeling due to the pressure on the nerve from the huge blood-clot). If the feeling doesn't come back then taking the leg is still a possibility. Also she discussed that the tumors are "low grade"...and most likely had been there for some time (they were small) and we would have never known about them except one started bleeding. So the best course of action is to bring her home and let her recover, and see where things go. I come home from my ride, having been working out how to possibly do the radiation treatments, as we have to give her a chance. Jeannie gives me this news...and wow! Talk about a totally different phone call than the one the night before! I was stunned!

So....hopefully I will be able to bring her home tomorrow (Monday) afternoon...and we will just take it from there. We will be looking into changing her diet...I know there are lots of homeopathic treatments and such for cancers, depending on the type. Overall I recall reading that most tumors live on the sugars...so if you cut those out you can help starve them...no carbs....thankfully PG won't have any problem with that diet...we start giving her chicken and turkey and she will be in HEAVEN!

What a roller-coaster ride this has been. I can only imagine how bad this would feel if it were one of US with this diagnosis....it's bad enough that it's one of our fur-babies let me tell you. And yet people all over the world get this kind of news every single day. It would be crushing, can't imagine how you wake up and move forward.

And so...if things continue with her recovery I will bring her home tomorrow...we drove down yesterday afternoon and visited...she is doing well, and made a HUGE fuss that we were there (she is in a very large 'room', and both Jeannie and I were able to crawl in there with her and just sit and touch her...she really loved that, always has. We stayed with her for a while and then had to leave, she was very sad (as were we, you know it's heartbreaking to leave when they don't understand). It will be great to pick her up though...she will be SO happy! To get our little family all back together again. And we will just keep putting one foot in front of the other and take it from there, doing what we can when we can. I guess that's all anybody can do.

As the old saying goes, it can always be worse.

One thing that has been bothering me...why did my 2 fish suddenly die, each on a night we get a terrible phone call? Those fish were the survivors of the 'turtles' (remember those from a year ago?)....these fish survived a ton of stuff..and were quite large...I'm guessing about a half pound or more each. Their water was immaculate (I have the Binford 350 super duper external 350gallon per hour filter that I had for the turtles....the water is PRISTINE I can tell you!)...can't for the life of me figure out why they suddenly died 2 days apart. There's no ammonia, nor anything else that I've tested for in the water...(and they are goldfish for crying out loud...cold water fish who can live in a stupid fish-bowl with no bubbling air, water filtration, etc for a long time). I just think it's very odd....and now it's so quiet in my office without the bubbles running....(I only ran the super filter at night for about 2 hours...it's only a 20 gal tank...@ 350gph,  run it for an hour and the water has been cycled MANY times thru a HUGE heap of carbon).

And so...the dreaded time change has happened once again. Winter is officially here in my book. My riding time has taken a huge hit in the last 3 weeks or so...it always does in the fall/winter...right now I've just lost interest I'm afraid. Hopefully things will look up when PG is back home. I sure hope so...the other 2 are getting lazy without the Alpha telling them what to do, and lording everything over them.

Have a great week, and I hope we shall do the same.