Saturday, June 19, 2010

I know what you're thinking...

...enough already. I said it awhile back, I should change this blog title to The Preacher Chronicles. But jewelry schmewelry, let's talk about dogs. And I know I just updated you, but I can't help it, this is note worthy.

So, we went in to see our beloved vet Dr. Daigle for Preacher's monthly check up. First of all we LOVE our vet. Love him. With 12 dogs you get to know your vet pretty well. Add to that the fact that we take our foster dogs to him and well, I see him more often than I see a lot of my family. He gets that I am a worrier and even though he teases me about it I know that he also goes that extra mile because of it. So anyway, we went in a couple of days ago and Preacher got his exam and his blood draw. We got another "disgustingly normal" diagnosis. Love that. In fact some of his blood work looked even better than the last blood draw. Crazy. Being that it's been a year I said to Dr. Daigle "Wow, can you believe it's been a year?" I told him that after Preacher's diagnosis I had read up on lymphoma, chemo, prognosis, etc. and that most things said that chemo could buy you a year to a year and a half. I told him that I read that and thought (hoped) maybe we'd get half that given Preacher's age and breed. Then Dr. Daigle said that at around the same time that Preacher was diagnosed he had diagnosed three other dogs with lymphoma and had sent them to the oncologist for chemo...and that Preacher is the only one still around. I felt a mixture of grateful and sad. Sad for the other families who didn't have the out come we've had. Of course I don't know what they did or didn't do...did they finish the chemo, entirely revamp their diets, feed fish oil, mild thistle, barley, pepcid, etc., were they as neurotic as me, or did we just get lucky? Dr. Daigle said "he's defied all odds". Defied all odds. That's some kinda wonderful.