Just got off the phone with our vet. He said from the MRI there is a mass in his right nasal cavity that has spread to some other part of his sinus. He said the next step is to decide if we want to go through with treatment, or make him comfortable the rest of his life. If we go through with treatment, they he will need a surgery for a biopsy to identify the type of cancer, then they will formulate a plan of chemo/radiation etc. Since our vet isn't an oncologist, he couldn't give us a recommendation on which path to choose and instead referred us to a vet oncologist who will be better equipped to make a recommendation. I will call this afternoon after they get his records from our vet to schedule a consultation. Our vet said there is no cure to eliminate the cancer, and his vision would most likely not come back.
I'm not sure which choice I would prefer. It will be 2 years tomorrow since we had to put down our last dog who had degenerative something or other where her spinal cord started deteriorating. According to the vet, she was completely pain free but her back legs were 100% paralyzed. The vet left it up to us to determine her quality of life and we kept her around for 6 months. She had good days and bad, but in hindsight I feel we kept her around a little too long selfishly. This time I am hoping (selfishly) that the vet doesn't leave us with such an open ended decision about his life and tells us what we should do.
He is adjusting amazingly to being blind, so much so that I am constantly checking to see if his eyesight has come back (it hasn't). He can navigate our entire first floor and enter and leave rooms on his own, find his water bowls, and goes straight to the back door and barks when he wants out. We never let him out alone, but he can walk across our back deck to one of the only 2 spots of grass we have to pee, then he walks around the pool to the other spot to take a shit. I took him on a walk the last 2 mornings, and he walks confidently down the street. He can even remember where a curb is (5 houses down) that he has to step over and starts high stepping as he gets closer. He will even go sit at our front window where he used to always sit and wait for another neighborhood dog to walk by and bark at them. He can't see them now obviously, but our other dog (who never used to bark at the other dogs walking by) will sit next to him and bark once to let him know a dog in his his yard and let him go crazy barking.