The Unfortunate End of Miles' Reign

Well, I was wrong about Miles, though we’re not happy about this. I thought that perhaps his hip had slipped out of joint in his old age. A trip to the vet later (oh, and $300 out-of-pocket), and we have a diagnosis: Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer. 

The acute swelling on the hip? Because his hip had shattered, basically exploded from the inside out. As if there’s another way to explode, eh? But you feel me. 

And it explains so much too. I mean, there’s the reason why he slowed down so fast, right? It wasn’t just rapid onset of age, it was cancer destroying his bones, pushing his normal bones apart, replacing it with weak, non-organized bony tissue. A real mess.

It doesn’t look like he’s going ot make it much further. He’s closing in on 13, but that’s not until November and honestly I’m not sure that we’re going to make it out of the next week before he has to go down for the count, even though things are looking better this evening.

The Vet gave us some medications, one was a pain reliever/anti-inflammatory, and the other was an opiate-based pain reliever/sedative. This morning he was sleeping outside under a truck, and wouldn’t eat. I pouted (okay, cried) a bit, as it seemed that he was going to have to say goodbye soon – real soon. But just in case, I pulled the pain reliever/sedative out of the routine – it had a 12-hour effective window – and it seems that it’s helping him to feel more like the Miles of old, albeit with a bum leg.

SO. It would seem that Miles is going to be spending the remainder of his days limping about on 3 legs in pain, and generally living a sh!tty existence, so he can enjoy a few of those moments around the food bowl. And, so it would also seem that if you know the Miles personally, if you have some final loving words to lay at his feet, now might be the time.

Now or never, yo’s.