Lucy, we're home! And I don't think it's ever felt so wonderful. We left the resort this morning, drove through the park one last time, then headed for Portland. We went straight to the vet's office to get Josie. I don't think she knew quite what to make of us being there at first, but she warmed up to us very quickly once we got into the truck and she realized we were taking her home.

The doctor removed the growth on her arm Thursday afternoon. She is sporting some serious stitches, but, fortunately, doesn't appear to be bothered by them. He already had the biopsy results back from the lab when we arrived today. It wasn't good news. It's the same cancer as she has on her head. It's no longer in situ. It's spreading. He's still very confident that's it's not internal in her organs or anything, but we're no longer referring to it as a small isolated pre-cancerous lesion. It's full-on skin cancer. We'll have to check her for sores regularly now. As long as we catch them when they're small, he can remove them via relatively quick outpatient surgery. The patch on her head is too large for surgery at this point. To close the wound, he would have to pull the skin so tight she would look like she had a really bad face lift. It would mess with her eye and she could lose vision in it. Given that she's already almost totally deaf and getting crippled from arthritis, possibly making her blind is not an option. We'll just keep an eye on her and decide on treatments as we go.

I've got a lot of unpacking, laundry and cleaning up to do tonight. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some photos from our trip sorted and posted before I go to bed.