Our greyhound Zane has a malignant tumor on a nerve in his front leg. It is pretty high up and seems to have metastasized into the shoulder. He had been limping and, since he is only five and a half, at first we thought this was a pinched nerve or bruise. We hoped so anyway. But our other greyhound Dorian died of bone cancer, so we always feared the worst.
The tumor was confirmed by an MRI a week ago and soon Zane will begin a series of twenty-one radiation treatments. The number is slightly staggering to me. I drove him in for the preliminary CT scan the other day (they use this to pinpoint the cancer before the radiotherapy) and he was wagging his tail all the way into the clinic in Culver City. I suppose it was an adventure to him. So far anyway. He seems to lack consciousness of his own mortality, at least on the superficial level, though animals often have a deeper knowledge inaccessible to us. We shall see how he responds to the therapy. Radiation of this sort, as most of you probably know, is not curative, but only postpones the inevitable.
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