Hazel came to CTDR via Town Lake Animal Center after having been picked up in an abandoned lot at a terrifyingly busy intersection in a bad area of town. She was in bad shape including a false pregnancy, high heartworm positive and with loads of tumors all over her body with a concentration on her mammary chains. The shelter and the doctors guessed her age to be between 12-14 years.
Arthur and I were asked to take her into our home and keep her comfortable for what would probably only be a few weeks. This was in May of 2005. At the 2 1/3 year mark, we had some dental work done on Hazel and had a lot of the tumors removed. We also discovered that after two years on Heartguard (our conservative choice of treatment), she was now heartworm free!
Some of the tumors that were removed and biopsied were malignant but we felt she had already outlived everyone’s expectations. At her age (now around 15 years old) we opted not to do any cancer treatments. This May, we were back in for what turned out to be a bad tooth. Whew! After two extractions and a cleaning, Hazel was feeling better and eating well again.
Then a few weeks later, she started coughing. As I made the appointment to have her seen, I told myself that this was some lingering effect of anesthesia or intubation. An x-ray showed that her cancer had metastasized into her left chest – she had three very large tumors clearly visible to the radiologist. So the past few weeks have been spent using different medications coupled with acupuncture to try to make her comfortable. Through all of this, Hazel remained alert and continued to have a good appetite.
But her breathing became more and more difficult and her lung slowly filled with fluid. On July 29, we had to make the incredibly hard decision to let Hazel go.
Dr Richardson at Hwy 620 treated Hazel almost from the beginning and he loved the old girl. He worked through every treatment option to keep Hazel comfortable and we will always be grateful to him for his immense compassion for us as well as Hazel.
Good bye Hazel. We loved you a lot for the short time you were with us and miss you very much!
With love,
CTDR foster parents Catherine & Arthur