Where's The Love?

Sorry it's taken so long for me to bring you this update. I thought that the silence from this end would heighten the dramatic tension that all of you were feeling. I thought it would trigger an avalanche of well-wishing cards and letters, encouraging comments to the blog, phone calls. Increased traffic to my YouTube videos, maybe. As it turns out, I thought wrong. No calls, no cards, no comments. No extra hits. Truth be told, I was feeling pretty down about it. "Nobody cares about me." "If only I'd been born a Jack Russell Terrier!" and "Why, oh why, did I have to go and get sick in August when so many people are away on vacation?" were among my many self-pitying thoughts. I was inconsolable.

I think, in some bizarre way, Dad was just trying to cheer me up when he shared his theory that people weren't "showing me the love" because they thought I'd already... how do I put this, well, you know... been tossed my last biscuit. That's crazy! Just because people knew that I'd been diagnosed with a malignant melanoma, given a bleak prognosis and been informed that the proposed treatments were deemed both experimental and expensive and that Mom and Dad were planning a vacation immediately following a scheduled visit to the vet... oh, crap! I was beginning to see his point. I'd heard the whispers at the Dog Park about "the farm". The saying at the park was "The PeeBee's get the meds, the Freebies just get dead." The old timers would explain to the pups that owners of the PeeBees -- the purebreds -- always went the extra mile for their prized investments while the mutts, mongrels and shelter dogs -- the Freebies -- were shipped off to this farm..."upstate". Hey, it may make you may feel better to sugar coat bad news, (the worst news, really), but look, we're dogs, not gullible 4 year old kids. We know the score.

Luckily for me, though, Mom & Dad are suckers for my adorable belligerence and my weepy doe eyes and decided to treat my like a PeeBee and pull out all the stops. Currently I'm in the middle of a course of 4 targeted radiation treatments and I'm scheduled for my second vaccination Friday afternoon.

The route down to the vet's office takes us past a few farms and, I admit, they do look pretty nice. Somehow, though, they look a lot more beautiful to me... on the ride back home.

The "C" Word

In case you haven't heard by now, my test results came back from the vet last week, and just like my Dad in his first semester of freshman physics at NJIT, I got a "C". The BIG "C", actually.
The tumor on my tongue turned out to be a malignant melanoma. We were hoping for something benign, or at the very least, a somewhat less aggressive form of cancer, but alas, what was made painfully clear by that "C" in freshman physics (and by the conspicuous absence of a Jaguar convertible in Dad's Christmas stocking), is that you don't always get what you wish for.


My vet, Dr. Bacon, recommended that we consult with another practice, the Red Bank Veterinary Hospital, in Lincroft. He said that they are the most advanced facility in the state and feature, in addition to many other specialties, an oncology department. He prepared my records and my films (doctor lingo for my chest x-rays) and wrote a letter about my case for the new doc. Mom was reading the letter and I thought the worst when, right at the end, I caught her wiping a tear from her eye. It wasn't so bad, really. Well, yeah, the diagnosis was bad, and the prognosis wasn't good, but I felt a lot better when I found out that what made her cry was that Dr. Bacon ended his letter with... "Roxanne is a nice dog and deserves your best care."

He said I was a nice dog. Now I think I'm gonna cry.


We trekked down to this mecca of pet medicine the following Saturday morning. The place is amazing! It's freakin' ginormous! Automatic doors, flat screen TV's, separate exam rooms for Dentristy, Opthamology, Oncology, Allergies and Skin Disorders, Emergency, Surgery... you name it. Granite everywhere! They even have their own Pharmacy. We checked in, watched a little Animal Planet on the TV and waited to be called.


We met with the Oncologist, the tall, cute Dr. Clifford. He had a diploma on the wall from Penn, which, I'm told, is one of the foremost Veterinary Schools in the country. I liked him a lot. He didn't come across like one of those Med School dropouts who went into pet medicine because it would just be way too embarrassing to become a chiropractor. He really seemed to like animals. Well, he liked me, anyway.


My bloodwork looked good and my lungs sounded OK, though I may have a bit of a heart murmur. He recommended radiation therapy for my tongue and said that I was a good candidate for the new vaccine (yea!). Mom and Dad asked about any side effects and Dr. Clifford said I shouldn't have any problems, that I was "a tank." A tank! He then must've remembered what Dr. Bacon wrote about me because he added, smiling, "a very nice tank..."



Mom looked to set up the appointments for the treatments and Dad went to the cashier to, as he put it, "pay for some of this fine granite..."

Next entry: Under The Gun: My Drugged Up Rendezvous With Dr. McDreamy