Suffering in Silence

Our dog Claude is 13 and was diagnosed last year with a fatty lymphoma. That ended up shrinking on its own after we took him to an oncology vet over in Oneonta after panicking from the initial diagnosis. He's been fine since then, but over the last few months we've noticed him slowing down somewhat. Last week Elizabeth took him out for a walk and he took some stumbles which surprised her, so she took him in on Saturday. The vet saw him and took a look at his legs and he seemed fine. The vet tried to take a look in his mouth (as standard operating procedure), but he couldn't get a good view because a) Claude was not happy about being probed in his proboscis and b) there was too much mucus in his mouth. So, they told us to bring him back and they'd take a look at him under sedation. The knocked him out and found a plum-sized tumor attached to his tongue. [Reason for excessive drooling and reduced appetite discovered!] Needless to say, it had to be removed right away, so they got our approval and went in. After they got the first one out, they discovered another smaller one behind it and took that one out too.

Elizabeth saw the photos of the larger one, but I am glad to say that I did not. The whole experience reminds me of how our beloved pets, no matter how clever they are, just simply cannot really communicate their issues to us. The vet told us he was surprised that Claude could breathe properly with the growth in his mouth. But he was a trooper and except for not eating as quickly as he used to, he seemed otherwise fine. We attributed his not being as active to just aging (his 13th birthday was in November).

It's heartbreaking because he must have been in a lot of pain, or at least uncomfortable for a long time. He's been drooling for a while and had been to the vet about that (the diagnosis there was that he had a chronic mouth infection that older dogs get and needed to have his mouth cleaned with an instant shampoo all the time--of course, now we know that wasn't the full story).

There's no real moral to this story: getting old and getting sick is part of the cycle of life. But I guess the trick to dealing with it is to remember that some of those you love can't ever tell you when they need your help.