Relax, Internets!

Just got off the phone with our new superhero Vet Boy! (He shall be known hereafter as Vet Boy, because his age falls between Girlchild and Boychild.) The pathology report is back: Murphy does NOT have cancer. He has a very weird, rare intestinal/lymphatic thing, I'll have to get the name for it, because it has 37 syllables and a rough approximation didn't come up on the Google because it is really freaking rare. The only paper he could find on this condition is 25 years old, and said that the prognosis was "poor," so Vet Boy called around to get an opinion "that wasn't from when I was two years old." (I knew he was the same age as my kids!) Vet Boy consulted with an internist who was excited as all hell to hear about it, in that weird specialist way that gets off on weird problems. The prognosis is not "poor" these days - it's manageable. Bottom line: Murphy's already on the appropriate diet, so now we will work on calming the inflammation he's experiencing, with a different round of antibiotics and just a hint of Prednisone, and a teeny bit of Pepcid for the acid in his gut. He may have to live with flares of it as we figure out what works to keep it in check, but he does not have cancer and in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a bad outcome at all - it can still have a "poor" prognosis, but right now Murphy's appetite is great, his spunk is back, and we will just work on figuring out the magic formula to keep him feeling good.