Month: December 2011

I didn’t get to talk to our vet today; but he did leave me a long message.  I’m hoping to call back and catch him tomorrow.

The oncologist looked over everything and thinks that the 3 masses are the lymph nodes.  We don’t know if they are swollen from him fighting off infection (he did have the infection on his other side after the amputation…) or if it is cancer.  I keep reminding myself that they removed the next 2 lymph nodes when they did the amputation and both of those came back clean.  Hopefully this is just residual of infections.  The oncologist wants to get him in for an ultrasound and needle aspirate.  On the message he said it could wait until next week.  I don’t think he realizes that I won’t be back until the NEXT week.  So I’m going to find out tomorrow if I should have my friend Maris or my brother take him in (both have offered, hopefully scheduling could work with one of them).  I’ll let you know what happens.

Thanks for all of the kind words!

OK, the good news.  The xrays showed no problems with any of Spencer’s remaining legs.  All clear there.  No tumors around there either.  The limping is probably due to some sort of soft tissue injury, so he is on an NSAID and rest for a week.

And for the worrisome news… Since they were doing x-rays anyway (which apparently Spencer was great for), I asked if they would go ahead and also take a look at his lungs.  Good news, his lungs are all clear.  Bad news, they saw 3 masses – one about the size of a quarter, 2 about the size of dimes.  They are inside the chest  cavity (I think), in an area where it COULD just be swollen lymph nodes.  Maybe still from the surgery?  But it could be something problematic.  He is e-mailing the x-rays to Spencer’s oncologist and will find out tomorrow if the oncologist is even in the office this week.  I sure hope he is.  Our family vet does know that these 3 spots were NOT there the day of Spencer’s amputation because they did x-rays the day before (digital) to make sure the lungs were clear (remember, we moved fast – from seeing the tumor to amputation was a week, so we didn’t take a lot of time for additional tests).  There was no hint of these spots on those X-rays from August 23.

Possible next steps… we get him in with the oncologist for an ultrasound to get a better idea of what is there.  We also do a needle aspirate of them to try to find out what they are.  Our family doctor said that they are in a location that they can be surgically removed; but we would want a good surgeon.  One hope that we do have is that possibly the Cardiologist MIGHT have gotten a view of this same area when she did Spencer’s cardio workup about a month after the amputation.  If she did, then we can have an idea of if these were there then.

For now… I’m not sure what to do.  I can’t really make plans until the oncologist looks at things.  There is a good chance that I will go ahead and fly back early from our ski trip so that I can get him to the oncologist next week.  That is just too much to ask the pet sitter to do.  🙁

If you wouldn’t mind keeping him in your thoughts and prayers, we sure would appreciate it.

We took Spencer to our family vet today.  He doesn’t think that this is anything serious, most likely a soft tissue injury or some sort of sprain.  Spencer was running around FINE last night around midnight.  When he got up this morning and had the limp I at first thought that maybe his leg was asleep; but when it didn’t get better in 10 minutes I realized that couldn’t be the problem.

He is bearing SOME weight on it; but about every third step he tries to hop along with only 2 legs.

The vet is doubtful that it is a break or fracture since for a dog Spencer’s size that would usually be an injury that kept them from putting any weight on the leg.  His hip seems fine and so does his foot.  No obvious injuries to the foot.

We went ahead and left him overnight at the vet for them to be able to observe him and in the morning they are going to run him to their other office for digital x-rays (the office we normally go to is about to move, the building they are in can’t handle the power needs for the digital x-ray machine that they already bought).  That way we can at least have a baseline x-ray and can hopefully rule out any bone problems.

I’ll be honest, I am a little worried since this last tumor started with Spencer having a slight limp.  That was the only symptom he had in June; but the limp quickly got better and I didn’t give it a second thought until August when we found the tumor.  Who knows if that limp actually had anything to do with the cancer…

The vet thinks it is unlikely that this is a new tumor since Spencer has been on chemo for 15 weeks.  There is definitely nothing that we can see.

The dog/house sitter will be picking Spencer up from the vet tomorrow (hopefully).  The vet doesn’t expect any surprises and really, if most dogs had gone in with this they would at most have gone home with an NSAID and told to watch it and not be too crazy.  But… between Spencer being a tripaw and the cancer… we are just being cautious.

My youngest daughter didn’t want to have Spencer stay and didn’t want the dog sitter picking Spencer up tomorrow.  She said she wasn’t sure if she could trust him with taking good care of Spencer.  haha  We went over and hung out with the sitter for a bit and she feels better now.

If something bad does come up tomorrow, I’ll likely fly back from our trip.  Luckily my mom and step dad are going with us, so they can stay with the kids and get them to all of their ski lessons and stuff.  But I sure hope I don’t have to miss all of it!

I’ll update tomorrow night once I know how the x-rays come back (and I’m settled at the rental house).

We have a 2:30 appointment at the vet.  Spencer woke up this morning and he is trying to limp.  His back right leg seems to have something wrong with it.  I can’t find anything, he doesn’t yelp; but he also is trying his hardest to not use that leg.  Him not yelping though doesn’t comfort me much… through all of this he has only shown that he was in pain one time and that was the day after his amputation when he tried to stand up and then fell forward on his incision.

We are up at the cabin, so 2 hours from our vet, hence the few hours until we will get in to see them.  Any good thoughts you can send him would be much appreciated.  Ugh.  We fly out tomorrow for a 10 day trip with him having a dog sitter at the house.  this is such a bad time, now I don’t want to go!  I’ll update you guys when we get back from the vet.

I have been so busy that I haven’t updated you guys!

Spencer had his 3 month ampuversary!  yay!!  He is still doing great.

And best of all, he is done with chemo and the oncologist gave a great update!  He came in and started laying out where we go from here – every 3 months for the first year.  I think he said every 6 months for the second year.   So I asked wht he thought were the odds that we would make it to any of those appointments, reminding him that initially he had said Spencer had about 50/50 odds of making it to 1 year.  The doctor said that he is cautiously optimistic that Spencer’s odds are MUCH better than that and that he would be surprised if Spencer isn’t back for his 2 year followup!

Santa was great to Spencer for Christmas, lots of new toys.  Some are already torn up as is Spencer’s habit.  We spent a lazy Christmas just hanging around the cabin – the 5 of us and Spencer.

Thanks for being there for us the last 3 months and I’ll be sure to continue updating!

Merry Christmas everyone!  And… I don’t have a Christmas picture with Spencer; but here is one with the kids taken Christmas eve.  (had to use a slow shutter speed to get it and I knew Spencer would not play “statue” very well, which is necessary with a slow shutter speed!).  The kids have all agreed that Spencer having a better chance of being OK was the best Christmas present they could have gotten.  🙂

yay!  so happy to be almost done with it.  As I have mentioned previously, I’m a little nervous; but I’m also happy to be done with it (almost).  He hates going to the vet for those appointments, so it will be nice to not have them anymore!  And what a great Christmas present it is to not only have him still here; but to have him here feeling so great!

And… because I haven’t done it for a while, some pictures.  This was our Christmas card this year.  The picture of Spencer and the kids was the back and the cartoon was the front.  Notice that even the cartoon dog is a tripaw.  🙂  (it was a flat, 2 sided card.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I don’t manage to post again before Christmas – I hope that everyone has a great holiday weekend!

 

Spencer is still going strong.  He has 2 chemo treatments to go and then he is done with that.  Both will be vincristine.  He is all done with the mitox.  About a month ago he did seem to slow down a bit; but he has bounced back and seems to hardly be effected on chemo days other than peeing more.

Tonight I realized that Christmas Eve will be his 4 month ampuversary.  I am sooooo happy that he is going to be here for Christmas.  And it brings tears to my eyes to think that he might not be here next year.  I have been in a positive mindset; but reading tonight that fellow tripawd, and soft tissue sarcoma patient, Gayle died has me a little pessimistic again.  My heart breaks for Gayle’s family tonight.  🙁

I’m excited to be almost done with the chemo.  My pocket book is definitely excited about it.  But then I’m also really nervous about it.  Spencer is soooo good right now.  What if it is only the chemo that has been holding the cancer off?  What if it comes back as soon as the chemo is stopped?  I know that I can “what if” from now until the cows come home; but it is still what is running through my mind.  When I decided to do this chemo I wondered if I would regret it.  If the cancer would never come back and I would always wonder if it just wasn’t going to come back or if the chemo had kept it from coming back.  Now, 13 weeks down the chemo track, I know I’m not going to regret it.  Because I really do feel like doing chemo was giving Spencer his best chance of beating the cancer.  And if it never comes back I am going to really feel that the chemo stopped it.  God, I hope the chemo stops it!

OK, enough of my rambling about what is in my head.  Some things that Spencer has been up to…

We had to swap the leg that they do his chemo in.  They had been doing it in his front leg each week (he is a front leg amputee, so it was always the same leg).  I started to notice a sore though, so for the last 3 treatments he has had them in a back leg.  He doesn’t seem to be able to get the bandage off as fast from his back leg.  With his front leg he always has it off before we even get home; but with the back leg I usually take it off after we get home.  🙂

Spencer loved Thanksgiving.  While I tried to keep him to his grain free diet, I did let him have grain free scraps.  I had kind of worried that he was losing too much weight.  He was looking like he might be on the verge of getting too skinny.  Well, just 1 week of getting turkey and letting the kids decide on if he gets 1 scoop or 2 and he had put on more than 4 lbs!!!  I put him back to his normal diet though and he was back down to his healthy weight within 2 weeks.  I wish it were that easy for me!  (though I have way more than 4 lbs to lose!)

he has FINALLY gotten back to being willing to go out without me *right* there.  I can actually let him out, do something else, then let him back in.

Here is a video that shows Spencer running around.  It was supposed to be a video of my son showing me his new gymnastics floor routine ( mom brag alert:  he had just started learning it the day before); but Spencer wanted to run through some too.  🙂

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28033290@N08/6445189381/