My UC Davis visit
My mom was here in the Oncology department in 2014 when her last golden, Cooper, was diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma. It is an unfortunate truth that 60% of golden retrievers will get cancer 🙁 She has had 4 goldens and all 4 have had different cancers! My plan is to beat this one!
One of the reasons we came here is a clinical trial they are conducting for osteosarcoma. While the doctors agreed with my diagnosis, they had bad news. The trial had been put on hold 2 days before! It would have paid for part of my surgery and all of the chemo that is the “gold standard” for this cancer. They are also testing a new chemo drug. So my mom was faced with paying for everything and boy is it expensive! She called around to all the vet hospitals who do these surgeries and the costs just for amputation ranged from $3-4000. UC Davis has 2 options, one where senior vet students do the surgery ($1200) and one where an orthopedic specialist does it ($3000). The student surgery schedule was booked until November so mom and I went home so she could decide what to do. I wasn’t too happy about the choices. If she couldn’t afford the surgery, she would have to consider “putting me to sleep”. It sounds nice at first, but she said I wouldn’t wake up and that is just NOT OK.
Some good news? They gave me a new drug, gabapentin, to add to the meloxicam and tramadol. Boy did it help! I felt like a new man and wanted to run again. Mom kept yelling at me not to, but it was hard to listen. The bunnies hadn’t been chased in DAYS. I still limped, but had a lot less pain.
MORE good news. Mom got a call saying they had a cancellation on the student schedule the next week! And, a few days later, the clinical trial doctor called to say the trial was back open! There would be some tests mom would have to pay for before they could “accept” me (why that would be a problem I don’t know- I’m fabulous!).
Stay tuned for my day-of-surgery experience! Let me leave you with some pictures of me and mom celebrating my 1 yr anniversary of getting adopted. 
