Molly’s left front leg is being amputated on Monday. It’s been a really rough few weeks for all of us here. But it’s either the leg or her life. I seem to be accepting it a lot better than my husband, Brad, and I wonder a little if it’s because I’m a mother. I don’t know. But I do know that once I got my head around it, and grieved for her, for the leg she is going to lose, I went into caregiver mode.
We took her in for her chest x-rays yesterday, and they came back clean … so far. It may be too small to see so we have to check her again in a few months. But the vet took the bandage off from where he took samples of the mass for biopsy, and it was a mess. The incision never healed, and the cancer mass was through the skin … it looked awful. I said to Brad, “If you had any doubts before about amputation being the right thing to do, this should get rid of them all.”
I’m at a stage now where I just want it over with. Take the leg, and let’s get her adapting so we can move forward. I’m ready for it.
I had my husband, and my sons, read all the comments on my posts … it helped. I could tell by the way my husband turned his head so I couldn’t see the tears. They’ve been pretty frequent with all of us these last few days. I have the advantage of being a woman, and can wail to my heart’s content. My two teenaged sons and my husband try to hold it in. It’s not working, but they still try to hold it in.
I never thought anything like this would be so sad. I’ve owned animals, all kinds, all my life … nursed them through all kinds of ailments, mourned when they died, and yet never would have imagined that the thought of one of them losing a limb would put me into a strange state of grief. Who knew?
