A Milestone Reached

Girly Girl has been very busy of late. She’s been learning to walk on three legs (and run on three legs, and pee while balancing on three legs, and hop up into the car with three legs, and…well, you get the idea). She’s also been visiting a lot of doctors. Surgeons, oncologists, radiologists, family vets, emergency medical personnel, orthopedists and on and on. 

She’s filled her days with chemotherapy. Adriamycin (Doxorubicin) which can be cardio-toxic and so she has also had an echocardiogram as well as blood tests with each visit and some times in between visits. The chemo causes her side effects (this happens in only 10% of dogs-oops). So Girly Girl spends much of her time between chemo visits dealing with nausea and diarrhea. She also has a pretty extensive regimen of a special high protein diet and a long list of supplements including Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas.

When she’s not doing any of these thing her mumma has been trying to get her back to some semblance of a normal life. In addition to visits to Grammy, whom Girly Girl adores, mumma has dragged Girly Girl to greyhound meet and greets where she has reconnected with all her favorite humans in our MGPS family. She also recently went on a week long business trip with mumma to Plattsburgh. This was a trip she used to make regularly “before.” She has been handling the return to regular activity like a pro.

With such a busy calendar it almost got lost in the shuffle. Daily life dealing with the “Big C” word can suck up all your time and energy. Focusing on the minutiae of serious disease has a way of excluding everything else. So much so that you lose sight of what is really important. This is why a big milestone almost got by unnoticed and under-celebrated. You see, Girly Girl turned seven years old on Monday February 15th while we were in Plattsburgh on our business trip. In December, I wasn’t sure we’d have any more birthdays together at all. Happy Birthday my sweet girl.