Bandit's Journey

Bandit, our 22-month-old Cane Corso, fell ill at the beginning of January and was hospitalized on January 5th. The hospital declared that he must have ingested something toxic due to excessively high calcium and phosphorus levels, which also put him in slight renal failure. They examined him for a protein that would indicate certain types of cancers - negative. They did note that he had enlarged lymph nodes in the groin area, but they didn't want to aspirate near his kidneys, so they did his spleen instead, came back clear - REMEMBER THIS PART. He responded to a calcium-binding treatment, IV fluids, and was discharged on January 8th.

January 10th, Bandit had not returned to his old self AND he developed horrible eye drainage (all of his eyelids were inflamed), and I took him to our family vet. I had blood panels and a urinalysis run to see what was going on and also had a Schirmer test run on his eyes. He was then diagnosed with pancreatitis, over 2000 (high end of normal is 400), along with conjunctivitis. We treated with a low-fat diet for the pancreatitis and eye drops.

January 11-16th, Bandit returned to his old self! It was great! Until he did a celebratory burnout after potty time where he let out a huge yelp. It seemed as if no big deal, the ground was frozen, maybe he did it too hard. But we were wrong.

January 16-19th, Bandit gradually struggled to walk and got progressively worse. January 19th, I contacted the animal hospital and drove to the initial hospital where he was hospitalized for pain meds, only to have to make the trek again later that night because Bandit became extremely painful and was hollering.

January 19-20th. We spent 6 hours in the waiting room, our daughter slept on the bench beside me, and Mark slept in the car to have a diagnosis of "he is strong-arming us, he is up and walking around and not showing me where he is painful. If you want to have an X-ray, you can admit him." Um... what? 6 hours of waiting, apparently he had no pain, and I could only get an X-ray IF we admitted him?! Keep in mind, we spent a huge sum of money for an overnight hospitalization initially, and we were just hours away from shift. So she discharged us with a fentanyl patch between his shoulders - that patch did diddly squat.

January 21st. I get into our family vet where she ran a series of X-rays to find out he has a narrowing of his spine in the lumbar area. Thought to be equivalent to a thrown-out back. Prescribed steroids, pain meds, and muscle relaxers, and within 12 hours we had our good ol' boy back! It was AMAZING. This lasted for 2.5 weeks. Then he seemed to irritate that injury again. Eventually, I picked up a second round of the same medication to start.... Only for it to not work.

February 1st-8th, gradual but progressive decline in walking. February 12th month check-up from initial hospitalization on blood, kidney, and pancreatic panels are run. Got the okay that we will eventually start NSAIDs to continue to reduce inflammation in the spine.

February 14th, Bandit is extremely painful, brought back in to get another round of X-rays, same diagnosis, approved to increase pain meds AND include a sedative medication to help him remain comfortable.

February 15th, Bandit seems fine all day until the evening hours where hollering is observed, more weakness in back legs, but mellows out and is presumed fine.

February 16th-Early morning hours of 17th, Bandit was fine all day yet again, got bumped slightly by our other dog, and it went downhill from there. Hollering, total hind end weakness. Struggled to go potty, pottied on himself twice, and the second time even falling in it.

That was it. We were NOT taking him back to the initial hospital anymore.

Took Bandit to UW Madison Vet Center, where he was immediately seen and admitted. They were able to help us cart him in.

The vet was thorough and agreed there was something going on in the back and informed us that the Neurology team was going to do a review once they were in.

Treatment would be... Chest X-ray, abdomen ultrasound, fine needle aspirate if something was found to be off, and MRI with CSF tap. Great!

Phone call received at 3:30 PM. A call I wish to have not heard.

Bandit's lymph nodes were enlarged in the groin area - the SAME ones from the “toxic ingestion “ diagnosis. Aspirate indicates cells consistent with Stage 5 Lymphoma or Leukemia. How is it possible that it’s the same nodes? It was CANCER from the original diagnosis that was completely missed by the Internal Medicine team it seems - will know more when I speak to oncology.

Our hearts are shattered. Absolutely shattered. This is our baby, our puppy, our little man. He won't live to see his second birthday; the lymph nodes that the one hospital saw enlarged were more than likely CANCER a month ago, but they were so dead set on toxic ingestion that they didn't push further.

If it's Leukemia, he could have as little as a week, but nothing more than a few. If it's Lymphoma, he can have 1-2 months to live with treatment.

He can’t come home because of the pain management through IV fluids keeping him more comfortable than oral pain meds.

My baby boy, my shadow, my mama's boy. Mark's furry son, his little boy. Our daughter's protector, her furry best friend. He is our other dog's companion, and hell-raiser to our cats.

Bandit even has his own song, by Jerry Reed, and goes nuts every single time he hears it.

Our future has completely been altered. There is no happy ending; we are now going to be bearing the financial burden of $14,000+, and no healthy boy and have to help him cross the rainbow bridge. But..... "he just has an aggravated back injury" “he just ate something toxic”.

We know we won't achieve what we spent on Bandy, that was solely our decision to help him get better and we are not regretful of that. But for those that followed his story on Facebook, and choose to help out, it is greatly and deeply appreciated.

The road ahead is a long one for our little family. This guy was supposed to have his whole life ahead of him with us, walks, adventures, hunts, car rides, singing to us, snuggling under the covers, sitting on his butt, making lip suction noises, giving endless dork faces, smacking us with his big a$$ paws, chasing bunnies and birds, shredding dog beds. No matter what he did, his little nub would go wild, that is how he got his nickname "Mr. Nubbers".

We are deeply going to miss this guy, this is going to be harder than any of our animals combined that we have owned. There will never, ever be another Bandit - not one dog we have ever had nor known had a personality like this guy.

2:45, 2/18 - Bandit ran across the rainbow bridge in my arms. Before he left us, we sang his song to him by Jerry Reed, “The Bandit”. It was his song that he would go crazy over and the first song we played when we first took him home. We will miss this little moose and forever cherish his impact on our lives and how we impacted his.

2/21. I spoke with the Oncologist today and some results came back that are leaning more towards him having Acute Leukemia that spread to other tissues. His bone marrow was riddled with cancer . His spine also had an 8cm mass that adhered to his spine causing him all of that pain. We now know the choice we made was absolutely the right one, our poor baby boy .