Maple Reach

A quick update on Henry. If you want the full story, check out the previous blog, Henry Keeps Overcoming Adversity.

A few things have transpired with Henry’s miraculously shrinking tumor… Our holistic vets and surgeon had us staying the course with his herbal treatments and meds, calling the surgeon’s office each week to put off a surgery as long as the tumor kept shrinking. The trigger for the surgery decision was if the tumor started growing again.

The “crater” — which is as good a term as any for how the open and shrinking tumor looked — kept closing in… from about 3″ across to the size of a dime. Then, quite suddenly, it was once again the size of a nickel. Time to get it out.

The surgeon said the mass was mostly contained in a tidy little pod of scar tissue — his body had walled most of it off. That is quite remarkable, and it’s something the surgeon had never seen quite like that before. The surgery ended up being a bit more complicated, however, because there were tiny tendrils that reached out of the necrotic tumor into a couple of the nerve sheaths surrounding it. He did his best to remove those “roots” and feels pretty confident he got them all — but nerve sheath tumors are notorious for coming back from even a few tiny cells.

He was able to gather enough tissue to close the wound, and Henry pulled through his sixth surgery like a trooper. Henry Blue is an old hand at this, having had, at various points, a neuter surgery, three surgeries on his front legs and a lumpectomy from the same location barely six months before. Other than a small drainage hole (from a seroma) that is healing slowly, and a close shave that has his fluffy hind end looking a bit lopsided, he’s doing extremely well.

The surgeon was worried the muscles around the damaged nerves might not work properly — and he is a bit less steady on that leg — but even that seems to be getting stronger by the day. The two straight months of strong antibiotics and/or the combination of meds and herbs had the side effect of causing dry eye. But we’re treating that with the canine equivalent of human dry eye meds and they’re open, bright and shiny once again.

Henry doesn’t know he has any problems whatsoever, and he’s rather annoyed being on activity restriction (until the seroma heals up completely). But he’s using that excess energy playing with his ball and making his iconic sculptural pieces, as posted on his Instagram: @henry_blue_artist (be sure to read Jamie’s brilliant critiques). And, of course, he’s enjoying lying in the shade under the big maples, surveying the property at a leisurely pace and sniffing the wind from the deck outside my office.

This has been yet another rough road in a couple of years of rough terrain. At more than one point, we had braced ourselves for the worst possible outcome. We cannot know if this solution is permanent or if we’ll face the same thing again in the coming months, but we’re stacking the deck in his favor by continuing the herbs that helped shrink his tumor in the first place, in hopes they will keep any potentially remaining cells from proliferating.

As for now, life is good. We feel incredibly fortunate to have this additional time with Henry, and we’re continuing to embrace each day with him, giving him all the love and play and rest he needs to keep healing.

3 June 2023