Today is day 8 of Josie's 30 day treatment for the squamous carcinoma on her head. The medicine is doing exactly what the vet said it was going to do. It's burning the diseased skin off to allow new clean skin to grow back. Unfortunately, it's also taking a lot of non-diseased skin with it. Her skin is coming off in chunks. It's disgusting, but I have to keep reminding myself that it's for her own good. What troubles me more than anything is how much it hurts her when I have to rub more medicine on or wash off the old stuff. I try to be as gentle as possible, but since it's, basically, a giant raw open wound, any contact is painful and she's very vocal about it, too. Breaks my heart to hear her cry like that and know that it's because of what I'm doing to her. She's gotten an awful lot of treats this past week in an attempt to assuage my guilt.

The vet asked to see her one week after we started treatment so we're going to see him this afternoon. I'm sure everything will be fine, but I still have this horrible feeling he will say something like, "Oh, it's not supposed to look like that!" or something equally bad.