NATERNET

It’s a Sarcoma

I just got off the phone with our vet. The news about Marley wasn’t exactly what we were hoping for, but it’s also not the end of the world. She has a low-grade soft tissue sarcoma. So, yes, it’s cancerous, but she has two things working for her:

1. Since it’s low grade, that means that we caught it pretty early on, which increases the chances that it hasn’t spread too far.
2. Being on her leg, the chances that it has spread to any of her vital organs is next to nil. It also increases the chances that the surgeon can get the whole thing out, so that’s good.

I never thought that I’d have to be setting up surgery for a pet, especially surgery for cancer, but, here we are. Soft tissue sarcomas have a low chance of metastasizing, about 5 to 10%, especially when they occur on a limb and not on the abdomen. 

Our vet was very positive about Marley’s chances for full recovery and was cautiously optimistic about the chance that a surgeon could get the whole tumor out. So are we. We’ve tried to adopt a positive attitude. What else can you do, really? It’s a dog with cancer, but it’s not the end of the world and certainly not the end of our Marley. All we can do is upbeat about it and hope for the best.

On that note, I really want to thank all of you who expressed concern in response to my first post about Marley; whether you commented on it, emailed or called us. I know that she’s just a dog, but she OUR dog, and so many of you know what that feels like. You never want to be in a situation where anyone or anything close to you has to deal with something like cancer, but it’s so much easier to deal with when you know that you have so many wonderful friends supporting you. Thank you all so very much. I’ll be keeping you posted as we go through the process.