Where the Sidewalk Ends

I’ve been putting off this post for a while. It wasn’t one that I thought I would ever have to write, hoped I never would. But hope can only take you so far. Denial a little further but eventually truth in all its terrible glory will not stand idly by.

My dear, sometimes sweet, High Queen, Seneca has cancer. I’d known about the common types of equine cancer. These are sarcomas and melanoma. My lovely drama queen has neither of those. No, no, common types of cancer were not good enough for her. Seneca has osteosarcoma, otherwise known as bone cancer.  It’s extremely rare in horses. Look it up, you’ll see just how outside of the box my mare had to go to make her walk in to that good night a spectacularly unusual one.

It all started just before Halloween.  My travel plans changed so I was actually home for Halloween when I wasn’t expecting to be.  When I went to feed my ponies one afternoon I noticed a small swelling on Seneca’s jaw, just behind her chin and about where the noseband buckle would be.  It was a little sensitive to the touch but she was eating normally.  The vet was due out the next week for fall shots so I decided to have her take a look at the swelling if it was still there when the vet came out.

The vet arrived and examined it and we were both a little shocked to realize it wasn’t a normal swelling but a bone fracture.  Yet, what worried me was there was no wound, no damaged skin, so how had Seneca hit herself, or one of the boys hit her hard enough to fracture her jaw but not damage the skin?

We x-rayed the area and saw there was indeed a fracture.  At the time the vet herself told me it was unlikely to be cancer. My marching orders were to photograph it once a week but wait and see.

Within a couple of weeks the area had doubled in size.  Seneca was still acting and eating normally but while my head still wanted to be convinced by science, my heart already knew.  The vet came back out for a re-check and we didn’t need to x-ray it again, we both knew that my mare was one in a million.  My vet is this lovely French Canadian who was extremely sympathetic and had on her own done extensive research and examined the x-rays from every angle.  But there was no denying that cancer was cancer and with this kind there really was nothing we could do to cure it. We both talked about what came next and that Seneca and I were both not yet ready to say goodbye.

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Florida, while wishing that I was at home spending time with Seneca.  I don’t know how long she has left. As long as she’s happy, eating and acting normally I will continue to spoil her. There will be a day though, probably before Christmas when Seneca will look at me and I will know that it is time to let her go.  I’m doing everything I can to make the best memories possible until the end but it is so very hard because I have loved her big, snobby, brown butt for eleven years. And I do not want to let her go, I know it’s what’s best but it hurts so damn much.

Keep it between the flags everyone.