Big enough for it's own name

Just when I got all cocky and posted that Goldie was doing so much better, now she's not.

Yesterday was so weird. That's the only way to put it. It shook us.

All was normal in the morning. I told Goldie for a walk, she ate, she followed me around as I did housework.

I noticed around 11 a.m. that she seemed to struggle a bit on the stairs. She slowed herself on the way down so that she was just kind of letting gravity take her from one step to the next. And going up, she lost her footing and slipped from a stair a few times. She was panting, heavily, constantly.

I also thought I started to notice... it. The tumor. Just from glancing at her. It has always been visible to the naked eye, but after that first finding of it, it shrunk a little and was less red.

She had a follow up appointment with the oncologist yesterday, and it took three attempts for her to walk up the steps to the trunk of the SUV.

In the waiting room, the tumor was just THERE. And, I realized, she couldn't sit down. She'd start to lower her rear, and then stop and stand up. This happened repeatedly, then she realized that if she went down on her front paws first, she could kind of fall over on the opposite side of her body from where the tumor was.

Then she couldn't get up. Whether it was the tumor or her arthritis (we had to take her off her arthritis meds for the chemo), or that the huge tumor was between the legs that have arthritis and so it was a combo effect, she couldn't lift her hind.

We opted out of another oral chemo that is still in the testing phase with the FDA, and took her home with steroids. The hope is for the steroids to shock it into shrinkage, at least for a week, two, maybe three on the outside. But we're preparing ourselves that it won't.

Here are pictures of it from last night. Its big enough to get its own name, don't you think?

Isn't she still adorable, even with a mean, mean tumor?