it's never good when...

the vet walks into the exam room and says, "i'm afraid i have some bad news for you." abby's biopsy results came back and her tumor was right on the border between grade 2 and grade 3, and with these types of things they "round up". grade 3 mast cell tumors are extremely aggressive, and even though they removed the whole tumor on tuesday, chances are very high that it has already spread to her lymph nodes and will eventually show up in her liver or spleen. according to the vet today, without treatment abby will have less than a year. all the articles i have read on the internet paint a similar dismal picture. she's probably only got a few months left. so we need to make a difficult decision. there are two chemo treatments we could choose from. one would be simply giving her prednizone which would be the milder (and cheaper) form of treatment. the other option would be to go on the full-out attack with the real stuff - vinblastine. even with the heavy duty (and super expensive) stuff there are no guarantees. if the cancer has already metastasized, the chemo will only delay the inevitable. and most likely make her miserable. i always believed that i would do anything, including going broke to care for my animals. they are family members no matter what non-pet people believe. but at the same time i have a baby to worry about, and two mortgages. i have no problem eating nothing but ramen noodles for a long time but that doesn't exactly work for quentin. and the practical side of me has a hard time sinking a ton of money into treatment that may only add a few miserable months to her life. right now we think we will start her on the prednizone and continue to monitor her condition. she isn't acting sick at all. she is back to her same goofy self. our main concern no matter what is her quality of life. we do not want her to suffer or be in terrible pain. no matter what happens i know that she lived a good life with us and was lucky to make it this far. if the beagle rescue had not sprung her from that shelter in west virginia, she'd probably already be gone.