Fall 2014
We left Steve in North Carolina in late August. He was settled in an apartment. We had to furnish it and everything but the mattress and box spring arrived before we left. Steve will sleep on an air mattress until it comes, sometime in the next two weeks. It was surreal leaving him there and heading back to Wisconsin without him.
The end of August and beginning of September is always busy with school starting. This year Gabi will be a senior and Zach will be a freshman. Gabi needs Senior Portraits taken and with everything going on I have not found a photographer yet. I scoured the internet one afternoon and did not find anyone with an opening. I sent out a couple email requests and a few days later I had made contact with Katrice Battle. She is a photographer in Milwaukee. We decided to meet at the Botanical Gardens for the photo shoot the following week.
So, both kids are registered for school and Gabi’s photo shoot went great. Breathe, ahhhh.
I was working 3-4 days a week carrying a full time practice. I loved my career. I was very fortunate to have a vocation that was never “work” or a “job” to me. I loved what I did. I had amazing patients/families. I had amazing staff. Leaving all that was going to break my heart. (A part of me secretly wished Steve did not like his job in North Carolina, then maybe we would re-think the move.) I decided not to tell anyone at work, or any patients/families, about our move until I knew for sure the time frame. I did not want to have to spend months fielding questions about it when I did not have specifics. It was difficult to keep that to myself. I felt like I was lying by not telling everyone.
We had a lot of interest in the house early on and several showings. One couple from Chicago scheduled a showing and fell in love with the house. They made a slightly less than full price offer, which we countered and met in the middle, just a couple thousand off asking price. They were pre-approved, but had a house to sell which was not on the market yet. A few days later I got a call from our Realtor who told me the deal fell through. The couple had a few Realtor’s through their house and their appraisals all came in under what they expected. The proceeds from the sale of their house were not going to be enough of a down payment for the purchase of our home. Ugh!
One afternoon in late September, I felt a bump on Lucy’s right rear leg. It was about the size of a M&M. It didn’t seem to bother her and it was not red. She ran fine, played normally and ate well. I decided to watch it.
Over the next week it grew to the size of a gum ball. It was hard, not fluid filled like cyst. It felt like a cancerous growth. Unfortunately in my career, I have had the displeasure of feeling cancerous growths/nodes, so I was quite certain I knew what we were dealing with. I was devastated. I called to get her into our Vet and the first available was a few days away. Over those couple days the area enlarged, reddened and started to weep. She wanted to lick it and of course that made it more irritated. I ended up dressing it with a non-stick bandage and gauze wrapped around her pajamas so she could not get to it. She slept on a pillow, on Steve’s side of the bed. I slept with my hand on her so if she moved I would wake up. Those were long exhausting days and nights.
The vet, bless his heart, was optimistic it could be a non-cancerous growth. He knew I was a PNP and respected my assessment but I think he didn’t want to believe it either. Lucy was the kind of dog that you looked at and couldn’t help but smile and coo. She captured your heart with one look. It happened to everyone. My mom was not an animal lover, never wanted anything to do with any of the animals we had growing up. Then she met Lucy and all that changed.
The vet advised a biopsy. I wanted total excision. I just wanted it gone, no matter what it was. He did it later that week. It was a difficult procedure because of where it was located. She did not have a lot of skin to bring together to close the surgical site. He also told me that he removed all he could but “whatever this is” it looked like it was invading the muscle. It did not look good.
