It all started on a warm Sunday morning in mid 2020. Stevie and I were enjoying morning tea on the back deck when I found a pea sized lump on his back toe. He loved playing with a hard ball in the garden and I thought I had found a calluses. Luckily for us we had a vet appointment the next day at the local vet for a routine injection. The vet asked if I had any other concerns and I mentioned his toe.
She advised me she was going to do a fine needle biopsy. It was confirmed it was a mast cell tumour. I felt faint. Within a few days his toe was amputated and I was hoping that would be it. No…I was advised to make an appointment with SASH oncology. My nightmare for our boy had begun.
We were blessed to meet Veronika and her team who has lovingly looked after us since then.
Stevie needed another operation to remove his lymph node and Veronica’s husband took care of that. A few weeks after his surgery, I took him back to start chemo. In the time it took the wound to heal the cancer was back. It didn’t look good. Veronika asked if I would rather start palliative care but I had faith and said ‘no, let’s try the chemo”. He sailed through it, the best decision I made, he has never been sick or sad.
He continued to stay in remission but then Easter weekend this year I was rubbing his neck when I found lumps. Veronika made room for him the day I called her and it was confirmed that he had lymphoma. So we started a different type of chemo and again he is doing well. The lumps have shrunk slightly and who knows where and when our journey will end, He has been on different chemos non stop since August 2020. He is living a happy life without pain and I know that if we decided not to commence chemo he would have passed away in no time. Stevie loves his now weekly visits to SASH, I believe he thinks it is a social outing not a medical one.
Long live Stevie boy❤️ He will hopefully turn 10 in March next year.
