Hope and Basketball

With all the great basketball this weekend, I kind of wanted to be blogging about this game from yesterday:

Kansas 88, Kentucky 76

I definitely wanted to mention this game from Friday:

Kansas 107, Niagara 67

I most certainly wanted to talk about an even more exciting game on Thursday, which made me scream so loud my throat was sore:

VCU 79, Duke 77

However, there's something way more important that's on my heart and mind today that I have to talk about instead. On Saturday, our veterinarian called with the results from a biopsy he'd done last week on a strange growth we'd recently discovered on Hope. Unfortunately, our little girl has a malignant mast cell tumor. While we are shocked and saddened about this news, it would seem at this point that the good news outweighs the bad.

The Good News:

• We believe we found the tumor relatively early--we're pretty sure it wasn't there until about 5 weeks ago, when we pointed it out to our vet, who wanted to wait a few weeks before acting just to see if it went away on its own.
• The mass is a Grade 1 tumor, which just means that the mast cells are relatively well differentiated and the tumor is less aggressive than one at Grade 2 or 3.
• Hope doesn't seem to feel bad at all, although she'd finding the lump quite irritating and wants to lick it more often than we would like.
  
• We were able to get an appointment with a veterinary oncologist in Kansas City really quickly, so we'll meet with her on Thursday morning.
  

The Bad News:

• Hope's tumor is in a very sensitive area, so our vet thinks it's going to be very difficult to remove, which means that Hope will likely have to undergo radiation and/or chemotherapy after surgery.

We are very sad that our sweet little girl is going to have to go through this ordeal. Although we don't know her exact age, we're pretty sure she is way too young to be developing these types of tumors, which generally don't start until age 8 or 9. Of course, early onset of major diseases seems to be a recurring theme in our family--I guess you could say we're way above average in that sense!

All kidding aside, please say a prayer for our adorably sweet and goofy (but very loud) girl Hope when you get the chance.