Liberty & Artemis

Artemis and Liberty were half siblings. We brought them both home the same day and they were inseparable. Just before Liberty's 8th birthday, she suddenly became ill and went from the "picture of health" to gone in just 36 hours. I had never even HEARD of hemangiosarcoma before this. We were devastated, and immediately asked for blood work for Artemis to at least have a baseline. His blood work brought more bad news. Further testing (liver and bone marrow biopsies) at Cornell revealed multiple myeloma. The only high point of that diagnosis was that this cancer was at least treatable and the median survival time was 540 days with Melphalan chemotherapy, which is significantly longer than the survival time of 220 days. The goal was to give him quality time. From the time we started treatment until the end of his time with us it was just over 2.5 years....that's over 900 days. We treasured every moment with our big guy Artie, but in the end, cancer had it's way. These two losses are the reason that we now have Justice in our lives (along with two other boys). Justice is HERO #1114 in the GRLS program. Our hope is to someday put an end to the loss of our furry loved ones.....and maybe even our non-furry loved ones...through the information gained by the study.