My pal Sunshine has been looking a little odd recently. His tummy has been swelling out a little bit and while I thought he was just turning into a fat old pooch, Kerri felt that there might be something wrong. I burned several days waffling over the issue but today I took him in to see the Vet. Glad I did because he's quite sick.

Poor old Sunny has got the big "C", the worst fucking word ever devised by mankind... he's got cancer. Hopefully it is something that can be removed by surgery but I won't know for sure until they open him up next Friday.

For animals things seem a bit less fair. The doctor is "pretty sure" that it is in his spleen and that he can remove it (the tumorous spleen). But this is all based on x-rays. There's a small chance that it is actually one of the lobes of his liver and a smaller chance that it is part of his intestinal tract. Can't tell just yet. I'm sure there are high-end facilities to make a more definitive diagnosis but give the size of the tumor and time, it seems to make more sense to get in and go to work. Funnily, that's how we do problem diagnosis sometimes at VPOP.

I appreciated the Vet's sensitivity to the financial commitment but it was hard to not also feel irritated because he was talking about mine and Kerri's "first child". He was warning me about the cost associated with saving my best pal, the one who virtually never leaves my side; The one who has chased and returned more than 250,000 tennis ball throws. Given my emotional state at the time, I'm sure I would have been just as irritated if he had not given me a ballpark figure. I don't suppose the doc could have provided an acceptable remark at all.

As an aside, I really like this doctor and couldn't think of a bad thing to say about him for the last 6 years we've been taking Sunny to see him.

I'll know more tomorrow when some blood tests come back. Sunshine is tentatively scheduled for surgery on Friday, unless more bad news comes back from the tests.

Kerri added some welcome levity to the situation tonight when she suggested that we rename Sunshine to something like, "Remodel" or "Bathroom" or "Redo"... referencing our bathroom remodel fund we've been stashing away which will be tapped to pay for all of this. It's not with any level of regret that I say this... it's just a funny thing to hear at a crappy time. Actually, no pun was intended but that makes it even funnier, huh?