It’s Just a Pulled Muscle…..

At the beginning of February 2018, Roscoe came in from outside with a limp.  It’s not the first time he’s limped.  He sometimes has allergies, sometimes tears a pad, and often gets a bit rough with his adopted sister, Hazel.  I thought nothing of it.  I checked his paws, and there weren’t any tears or abrasions.  I figured he and Hazel were rough housing in the backyard.  No big deal.

A few days might have passed before I noticed the limp again.  Again, I checked him out.  Again there was no outward sign of trauma.  Again, I figured it was Hazel and Roscoe playing too roughly, so I started to accompany them on their backyard ventures.  Sometimes he limped, sometimes he acted just as normal as always.  Being that he’s 11-years old, I considered he may be getting arthritic.  He is a bit overweight (dogs favor their owners), and for the last couple of years, I’ve had to park next to a curb for him to be able to make the two-foot jump into the car.  None of these differential diagnoses was a stretch, in my paramedic-trained mind.  It all was just a natural progress of canine aging, I figured.

The limp seemed to subside for a week or so before I noticed it again.  I wondered if it might be a sprain that was poorly healing, and called to see if my vet was in.  He was out on medical leave.  I called back a week later.  He was still on leave, expected back in the first week in March.  I booked an appointment with one of the other vets, since the limp was now fairly persistent.

I dropped Roscoe off in the morning, as is often my M.O. with vet visits, expecting to hear something by mid-day.  After noon, I called to check on what the vet had to say.  “I really would rather have this conversation in person, but it’s not a sprain.  There is something showing in the X-Ray on the neck of the proximal humerus (part of the forearm closest to the body).  It could be something relatively benign like a fungal infection; or it could be something more serious, like a cancer.  Come in when you get off work and we’ll talk.  I’ll send you a copy of the images so you can see what I’m talking about,” she said.

The biopsy was scheduled for 21 February, followed by a week of waiting for word from Texas A&M histology.  The biopsy came back as some kind of malignancy.  The likelihood of osteosarcoma was now more certain, although not definitive.

I was scared.