New chemo and answers on the “spider bite”

First things first.  Spencer will be starting his new chemo drug next week – Methotrexate.  It will replace the adriamycin in his rotation and we will go up to 15 weeks instead of the 12 we were going to do with the adria.  I don’t know much about this one.  I haven’t found any posts about it on the tripawds forums.  I’ll ask more tomorrow when we go in for his dose of vincristine.  Tomorrow will be the end of his first cycle and so far he seems to be handling the chemo fine.

When he had his falling/weakness episodes our family vet ran some bloodwork (on Saturday).  Those results came in and his neutrophils are down.  The neutrophil count was 1,500.  Our family vet said she imagines that they will do another CBC tomorrow before doing the chemo as the cut off is usually 1,200 before they won’t do chemo and with him being close a few days ago…  For me, I’ll have to look into all of this again.  My oldest daughter had neutropenia when she was 15 months old until almost 2 years old and her lowest neutrophil count was 12.  yes, TWELVE.  So to me, 1,500 doesn’t sound all that bad!  I remember she was released from the hospital when her count got to 500 and that our goal was for it to get over 2,000.  I don’t know what the normal levels are with dogs though.  So I need to do some research.

And finally, the culture came back from Spencer’s assumed spider bite.  It turns out he had a drug resistent staph infection.  Oy.  Don’t know what the primary injury was, it may have been a bite, it may have been something else.  Who knows.

Oh, and still going with NO weakness episodes!  yay Spencer!!

Author: justjac

Spencer is our 5.5 year old Doberman. He was diagnosed with an aggressive fibrosarcoma on 8/22. He had his left front leg amputated on 8/24/11. Finished 15 weeks of chemo on 12/22/11 (mytox and vincristine). Lung mets found 12/28/11. Fought hard and lived a full life right up until the end. Went to Heaven 2/28/12. View all posts by justjac