my dog is maybe dying.

the title kinda sums it up.

the neurologist that shannon took her to was awesome, i guess, and shannon liked him a lot better than the guy in berkeley, who i thought was good, but i could see why he rubbed shannon the wrong way. he was a little brisk.

anyway, the new neurologist. he said, basically, in as diplomatic a way as possible, after much poking and prodding from shannon, that he (the neurologist) would not have removed the dog's leg, were he the person who had been asked. he acted like the symptoms were almost textbook symptoms and not that mysterious. the other three doctors who consulted on the dog's first leg problem were pretty stumped, with every test coming back either negative or inconclusive. and this guy was like, 'yeah, it's an auto-immune disorder or MAYBE, just barely maybe, a really serious food allergy.'

unfortunately, it's moving really fucking fast. she's getting worse. shannon switched her diet, took her off her usual raw food diet, which is specially formulated to look and act like wild dog's diets (everything is mushy and digested looking), plus bones. she's on tuna and rice and beans now. but it's not helping. it's hard to tell if that's because it's not dietary, or because the nerve damage is so far gone that it'll take a while to reverse it.

we just don't have much time, you know? she can't walk. at all. well, she can move a couple of steps, but it must really, really hurt. on the first leg, she limped, but she can't limp now because she's only got one front leg now, because those assholes told us we should amputate her fucking leg, when that didn't solve anything.

we are starting her on immune system depressants, to see if we can stop the deterioration and give her body some time to rebuild the nerves, but i am worried that it's too late. 

she will basically never greet us at the door again, because she can't move. she can't go outside alone since the surgery, which fucking sucks. she can't play in water. she can't come in in the morning and sass us until we get up. she can't go on walks.

i am worried that we're assholes to even make her wait the 10 days to see if the new medicine helps. like, maybe she just wants to die because her life fucking sucks now. she can't do anything that dogs like to do.

she barely wags her tail.

i don't want to put her to sleep without trying everything, because i think we'd always wonder if we could have fixed it. but i don't really think we can fix it. i think it's just too late.

i am having a hard time not being really mad at those vets. and feeling guilty for not looking more. i don't feel like we were hasty, because i feel like we talked to 3 different doctors who all agreed that the most likely causes for her lameness were the nerve sheath tumor or neuritis. but i can see how, when the first doctor checked her out and got the idea that that was what it was, he spoke to the others so they went in looking for confirmation of that. no one went in with totally fresh eyes. 

i wish we'd gone to this new guy before.