Hope's Coming Home!

Until just a few minutes ago we thought Hope was going to have to stay the night at the hospital in Overland Park, but we just found out that she's stable enough to come home! Chad is on his way to KC to pick her up as I type.

Earlier this evening when I talked to Dr. Layton, she said that our little one was still very wobbly and was unwilling or unable to stand up. She thought it would be better to keep her for the night, but she told us to call back in a couple of hours to check on her just in case. At that point I was trying to think of a clever title for this post that somehow conveyed that we were without Hope this evening, but not without hope. I was afraid that someone would become alarmed and think that we were hopeless about Hope's situation and not just Hope-less for the night. Now I don't have to worry about my clever post title or confusing anyone because Hope's on her way!

Overall, it seems that Hope's surgery today went pretty well. Dr. Layton called this morning to let us know that the pre-operative ultrasound didn't show any cancer in her liver or spleen, so that was a huge blessing. Hope did have some lymph nodes that were slightly swollen, but unfortunately it was too risky to biopsy them because they were dangerously close to some major arteries or something. The vet said they weren't alarmingly large, so for now we're just going to hope that those nodes aren't affected with any cancerous cells. Next week we'll find out the grade of her tumor (which basically measures how aggressive it is) and whether the margins around the tumor were clear of any cancerous cells. We're praying for a grade one tumor with a low potential for metastasis along with clear tumor margins!!

Thanks to everyone for the emails and phone calls offering well wishes and prayers for our goofy girl. We really, really appreciate it!!