| armaneo | 11-07-2016 11:11 AM |
Armaneo has been so much. He was put under anesthesia for an examination, at which time doctors removed loose teeth that may have been causing his mouth pain. They noticed a hard lump on his tonsil. He was put under anesthesia again two days later, at which time a surgery specialist performed a tonsillectomy. His recovery has been pure hell for him. He's on pain-killers and anti-epilepsy meds, but, the root cause of his pain never went away, and the doctors don't think it was his teeth or his tonsil.
Pathology was conducted on the tonsil, which revealed that he has terminal throat cancer (tonsillar squamous cell carcinoma), an extremely aggressive cancer with a median survival time of 2 to 6 months.
But, that's not what's causing his excruciating pain. I've had the difficult discussion about our options. One is obvious. The other is to send him to a dental surgery specialist to undergo yet another surgery (three in 2 weeks) to remove his major back upper right tooth (aka carnassial tooth) to see if that will help him. CT scans suggested there *might* be a problem there, but doctors discounted it because they didn't think in a million years it could cause that level of pain.
I'm already $5k in the hole and there is no guarantee this will help him reduce his pain. Worse yet, he's in such a weakened condition from the surgeries, lack of food and hydration, and meds (and appears to have an infection) that there is a high risk he doesn't make it through the surgery.
If he makes it and the surgery doesn't help his pain, we'll have to put him down. This is so tough. I love that little guy more than anything in the world. | 