Grace’s cancer is back. Back in November, she had a growth removed from her muzzle that turned out to be a mast cell tumor, and they couldn’t get clean margins. Maybe it’s the worrier in me, but I just felt like I knew it would come back, that she was living on borrowed time. It came back sneakily – under the skin, more inside her mouth, so I didn’t notice it growing right away. But it’s there, and it’s growing, and every once in a while we can tell it’s bothering her. Surgery’s not an option, so our vet has referred us to a veterinary oncologist and the earliest we can get in is April 5. It seems pretty clear that treatment won’t be curative. We’ll be looking at options to slow the growth and buy a little more time.

For the most part, she’s fine – she’s excited to eat, excited to go on walks, still cheerful and happy and playful. In a way that’s wonderful – I want her to feel like that! And in a way it’s really hard – it’s so unfair that this stupid tumor is going to take away this otherwise happy, healthy dog. But I guess cancer’s like that, right? It’s a mean sonofabitch that attacks indiscriminately sometimes.

So. Yeah. Between that and a couple of really stressful weeks at work, I’m struggling a little bit. I seem to have lost some of my knitting mojo – I’m definitely off sock knitting, which is bizarre, and I’m not excited about knitting anything else. I just knit because it’s there and I need something to occupy my hands, if not my mind. I even went to a yarn store yesterday, for the first time all year, looking for that dopamine hit. It helped, a little, not as much as it used to. But I’ll get back there. Until then, I’ll just keep muddling through each day. Thanks for listening, friends.