I have some bad, sad news....

My dog, Iris, has passed away.  She was not showing any signs of illness until the Memorial Day weekend.  She was acting as if she had a stomach virus or ate something bad.  We took her to the vet and she checked out negative for heartworms and other parasites so we assumed after a few days the illness would be gone.  On Wednesday, 5/31 she began vomitting again and refusing to eat so we went back to the vet.  They took xrays and also performed a barium swallow ---neither showed anything abnormal.  Iris stayed overnight and the vet had began an iv of fluids on her so she wouldn't become dehydrated.  It was expected that we would bring her home on Thursday afternoon.  Well, we didn't get to take her home...she was still refusing to eat and becoming more lethargic.  The vet said it would be best to go ahead and do surgery to look at her intestines for a blockage or infection in her uterus because she now could feel a large object/mass in the middle of Iris's abdomen..  Iris never ran a fever, but she was very weak and her white blood cell count was thru the roof. I repeatedly asked the vet if Iris may have cancer and she said the signs were pointing more towards the other two complications. So that evening the vet performed the surgery and a little after nine o'clock she walked out of the surgical room without closing/suturing Iris's abdomen together.  We knew something must be wrong...and it was the worst prognosis imaginable.  Iris didn't have an intestinal blockage nor infection in her uterus....she had a huge, softball sized mass in her upper abdominal region and it was too large to be removed.  The vet could not wrap her hand around it and it was attached to something else like her spine.  The vet said Iris's lymph nodes in that area were enlarged with cancer --lymphitis carcinoma.  She said we could keep her alive with chemo and force feed her thru a feeding tube, but the outlook was extremely grim that she would survive even after that.  She only had a 10-20% chance of survival...so as heartwrenching as it was - we decided to end her suffering.  Our precious Iris died that night.  We felt that as much as we wanted her alive; laying around in pain and being force fed daily was not the kind of life for our loving pet.  She will be missed immensely!  I loved her sooo much and did not realize how attached I was to her until she was gone.  Please cherish your time with your pets....they won't be around forever!

Hint of Blue Kowalski (aka Iris)  Born 6/22/00   -   Died 6/1/06