In late April we brought our 14-year-old dog to the vet with a suspicion of problems. She was diagnosed first with laryngal paralysis (which is somewhat operable, though with bad side effects, so we were probably not going to do it), then subsequently with a big lump on her larynx which biopsied to be an aggressive cancer, already blocking 3/4 of her windipe. The vet gave her a few days to live, and she was really poor after we got her home from the vet, needing fairly serious pain and anxiety medications. (I posted about this here on May 1.) We decided to not attempt any procedures, but rather to try to keep her comfortable. To our surprise she has been getting, not exactly better but certainly more stable, with no obvious pain or anxiety attacks and a renewed joy in activity (which however is rather limited by her reduced breathing ability). We know the cancer is not curable, and her time will come soon enough, but for at least a month she has been almost our old dog again, rather than dead as the vets (2 of them) predicted.
I suppose this should really go in the “victories” thread, but it seemed appropriate to a discussion of how far to carry out procedures on elderly pets.
