The Gloria Family: 3/1/09

So Gracie is doing really well. It was a little scary at first but she's getting better at walking and stronger by the day. She is very annoyed to be stuck in the spare bedroom still and has managed to pull out about 8 of her staples. Good thing we are heading to the vet on Monday morning.

We did get the pathology report back on the tumor...it was bone cancer. But the good news is that she doesn't need chemotherapy - can you imagine? The vet hospital checked her out so well that they didn't find a sign of cancer any place else. We still need to take her every 3 months for the next year for an exam and special chest xray to make sure. The oncologist says that this could just be primary site cancer and that means that it was only located there and hasn't spread. She is one lucky cat.

Hopefully after Monday, she'll be able to get out and about again. I know that Julius is missing her a lot and hopefully they will become friends again. She's a wonderful cat, and I just love her. I'm so glad that she's doing well.

Thank you to everyone for asking about her and all the well wishes. Especially the super cute card that Gracie got in the mail from her friends Duke & Jack (my friend Linda Kaiser's dogs)...funniest thing I've seen in a while.

As some of you already know, Gracie has been having some issues with her leg. Back on 12/22/08, Robert came home from work to find her limping. He took her to our vet and they found a small "lump" on her right, back leg. We didn't think anything of it since she started walking normally a day later. Within a few weeks, she was limping again, and then normal. This happened a couple times until this past Sunday, 2/22 when I found her limping and she couldn't put any weight on her leg at all. We took her to the vet again on 2/24. They did more x-rays and found that they "lump" had grown and because of it, she had broken her leg. Poor kitty!!

So on 2/25, I took her to a specialist. Now when I say specialist, I really mean it. I saw 2 vets, an oncologist, a surgeon, a radiologist and and endocrinologist. Holy cow!! Ulimately, the decided that Gracie has a tumor on her leg, probably cancer. And because of the break at the turmor site, they can't repair the leg. Our only options were to put her to sleep or amputate her leg. We opted for amputation, so that we could keep her. I left her at the vet on Wednesday, and her surgery was on Thursday. She did great!

We went and picked her up on Friday and brought her home. My biggest disappointment is that they shaved so much of her beautiful hair for the surgery! We didn't know where they would be taking the leg off, but they removed it at the hip. It's kind of odd to look at but we're getting used to it. She has been getting antibiotics and lots of pain medicine, lucky her! And she is learning to walk again; even getting to her food and liter box are hard for her. But the doctors say that she'll learn again in the next couple of weeks and be back to normal. They call her a tripod...which we thought was very funny. As you'll see from the pictures, Gabriel is taking great care of her; bringing her toys (which I think because of the pain meds, she is tolerating, for now). There are a bunch of pics below, but be warned, some are of the surgery site (staples and all) and aren't gross but not pretty either.

We are so blessed to still have Gracie with us. And although we had to pay a lot more for her than we planned, we couldn't be happier to have her home again with us.

She absolutely hates this dumb cone on her head but it keeps her from licking. Below is also the picture of some of the toys that Gabe thought for sure would make her feel better (a helicopter, airplane, robot, car, and another toy from his Build a Bear).