I am writing this blog bed-ridden with a cold, waiting for my boiling hot Neo Citran to cool. The past few weeks have been the most turbulently eventful weeks that I've experienced in a long long time. If I were to blog about every one of these events, I'm afraid that no one would have the patience to read them. So here's a digest version of what has happened in the past 3 weeks.
9/25 - Our agent sent us a house listing that just went online. It was so new that it had no photo at all. Usually we'd ignore listings with no more than one photo, but since we hadn't seen a house in a while (having been away on vacation), we decided to book an appointment.
9/26 - We saw the house in morning. It turned out to be the same model that we'd previously seen a few months ago from a builder. This was the model that prompted our house search in the first place. It meets almost all of our requirements. We went back for a second viewing in the evening. After some thoughts we decided to place an offer against another bidder, and won.
9/27 - During a walk in the evening, Bonbon suddenly stopped walking and had a hard time walking back home. We noticed laboured breathing and immediately brought her to the ER. X-ray showed a mass obstructing her chest. Her gum was pale suggesting internal bleeding. A splenectomy was performed to remove the mass. During the operation the vet did not see any spread to the liver, so we were hopeful that it was only hemangioma (benign tumor). A sample was sent to Guelph for biopsy.
9/28 - I took a day off to clean up the house and to take photos in preparation for selling my house.
9/30 - We received the devastating news that Bonbon has hemangiosarcoma (tumor was malignant). Our vet gave us an overly optimistic estimate of 1 to 1.5 years for Bonbon.
10/1 - On the night before our appointment with a canine oncologist, I did further research on hemangiosarcoma and found out that a more realistic life expectancy after surgery is only 3 months, which can be extended to 6 months with chemotherapy.
Our house was listed on the MLS tonight. We decided to show the house throughout the weekend and accept offers on Monday night.
10/2 - I prepared Chris for the bad news that we should expect to hear from the specialist today. And it did come as expected. We decided to give Bonbon her first chemotherapy treatment on the spot. We met another miniature schnauzer at the clinic who was having her last chemo treatment. She was diagnosed with cancer in April. When Bonbon came out of her treatment she was acting just like herself, barking the place up. We had to take her outside because she was making every dog bark in the clinic.
10/3 - We started reading up on holistic treatment of cancer and became more optimistic. In one case we read of a dog who survived cancer for 4+ years after diagnosis. We are convinced that the 6-month figure is simply an average, and are hopeful that Bonbon will beat that average.
10/5 - Our house was sold.
10/11 - I got bitten by Oliver for the Nth time and was extremely angry at him. We already gave him to my sister Emily temporarily because we were convinced that he was stressing Bonbon out. I would have no qualm giving him up tonight.
10/12 - Despite my canine-induced hand injury (left hand too!) I decided to bowl for the first
time in 5 weeks. I'd missed all those weeks because of my vacation, bad back, and time needed to clean and sell my house. Luckily I bowled 3 decent games. I had been in a pretty bad slump in the previous weeks.
I hadn't driven my car during the long weekend and noticed that the handling wasn't normal. I meant to check the tire pressure but forgot since I got home so late after bowling.
10/13 - On my way to work on the 401, I heard a noise and pulled over. The rear passenger tire was almost flat. I got Chris to deliver my portable pump but it failed to get the air pressure up. I jacked up the car and noticed two small nails. I got the car towed to a garage planning to have the tire repaired, but was told and shown that the inside wall of the tire was actually
shredded. Luckily my tires were at the end of their lives anyway so I just had my winter tires put on at a pretty reasonable price.
Thanks go to Chris, Emily, Dom and Marga. Between Chris, Emily and me, we made 5 round trips from the east end to the west end in one day (to get me the pump, get the winter tires from home, and to drive 2 cars back home). Thanks to Marga for recommending her friend Clayton who helped me get my car towed at a fair price. Thanks to Dom for being my voice-activated GPS in locating a garage.
10/14 - I drove my dad to York Central for a prostate exam in the morning. I went to a Long Term Care facility (for work purposes) before going to the office. In the afternoon I started feeling something in my sinus. By the time I went home I got a full-blown cold. I've never had a cold hit me so fast without warning. I had no chance to pop any echinacea like I usually do to give myself a fighting chance.
10/16 - I went to a hospital/clinic (human + dog) for the 5th time in 3 weeks. My dad already had to go back to the hospital the day before due to complications from the procedure. He had to go back again today since his condition wasn't improving.
