Folks, I could not post this until I talked to a few people from his life, as well being a little bit more sure in the diagnosis.
Please keep Rambo (RCK Rambo) in your thoughts over the next few months. Rambo has been diagnosed with Lymphoma and we are not sure how aggressive it is going to be. About 6 weeks ago he started having stomach issues, the runs, etc. At the same time he started heavy panting. We took to vet and they gave us some antibiotics, probiotics, etc. About 3 weeks ago he started throwing up (not blood) and panting really really bad. Then he started walking way from food, and that never happens. Even treats were not interesting to him at all. He started taking Rangers approach that if it made him sick he was not going to touch it again. I took him to the ER vet and they did a number of tests, images, and sent the results out for consultation. They found a swollen lymph node on the spleen. There was still a bit of a toss-up between lymphoma and IBD (irritable bowel disease). The treatment for an 11 year old dog is pretty similar, steroids. So, onto steroids he went. Starting with 30mg of Predisone twice a day for 7 days and then down to 30mg once a day. He also got some other antibiotic and stomach pills to help alleviate the throwing up. In the process of this Rambo lost a little over 10 pounds.
The good news is that the eating issues have stopped. He is eating properly (wants to eat everything in sight). The panting continues on and off and rare, but is sort of under control now. we also have runny poop, like watery runny, on and off during the day. We can most likely say that he is not in pain right now.
The bad news is that last night I felt hard lumps of lymph nodes in his neck. That was the first time I had felt them that hard and it is not a good sign of things to come, it sort of confirms the diagnosis.
Our next vet appointment is on Thursday at 11:45am so we will see how things are progressing at that time. We are also getting a second opinion on the Dx. He is comfortable now, he is eating, he is going outside. He knows something is wrong, and as all dogs do, they live in the minute. He is not ready to leave us at this time, and home for him is where the pack is.
Please do not suggest things like chemo, etc. He is 11 years old and doing anything other than supporting care / steroids at this time would be doing it more for us than him.
Edited to add: We know what the outcome of this is going to be and we are not imagining that a sudden cure will come along. We do not know if it is going to be weeks or months. There is just too much variation on how this disease progresses. There is no cure for this, there is only time.