Almost half way through… my thoughts on chemo

Spencer had his 7th dose of chemo on Thursday.  He is having 15 doses total.  So we are almost half way there.

First, a little back info about what he is doing for chemo for those who haven’t read our story…  Spencer had a grade 3 fibrosarcoma on his front, left shoulder.  His leg and scapula were amputated.  his lymph nodes came back clean.  At last x-ray nothing had shown up on his lungs yet.  But with it being a grade 3, our oncologist said we have to assume that it had spread at the cellular level.  Prognosis without amputation or chemo was that Spencer would have a month or less from when we first saw the tumor (August 17).  We did the amputation exactly 1 week after first seeing the tumor.  Chemo was a harder decision.  In the end we decided to go with it.  At first Spencer was going to do 4 three week cycles.  It would be adria and cytoxan on week 1, then vincristine on weeks 2 and 3, repeat for a total of 12 weeks.  Generally 15 weeks are recommended; but adria can cause cardio myopathy and dobermans are already at a very high risk for cardio myopathy.  So at that the risk to benefit flips going beyond those 4 doses of adria that he would get with the 12 weeks.  Spencer had 1 does of the adria and cytoxan, then a week with the vincristine.  And then he was staying with my mom while we were out of town and he had some episodes of weakness.  We ended up having a cardio workup done and found that he had decreased heart function.  They don’t think that the adria CAUSED it; but it was certainly not advisable to continue with adria considering the heart problems we now know he has.  So, we had to do something new.  We swapped out the adria/cytoxan for Mitox.  Not as good at fighting his cancer; but the best we can do considering his heart problems.

Ok… now on to my thoughts.  Like I said, the chemo was a much harder decision than the amputation.  While the financial aspect was certainly part of this, it was only a small part of my hesitation.  I knew that if it would likely give him additional QUALITY of life I was in favor of it.  But I was worried about doing it, him feeling awful, and then him still dying.  See, even before the amputation he seemed FINE.  You would never have looked at Spencer and thought, “this is a sick dog”.  KWIM?  But there was that tumor there, big as day, showing that indeed, he was a sick dog.  So then we did the amputation.  Once again, he seems very healthy (minus a leg) and now, there is no huge tumor staring you in the face.  I wanted to believe that he was cured.  But then the oncologist gave his recommendations and they were that without chemo we should expect another tumor to show up within a couple of months.  He explained that with this being such an aggressive cancer that we had to assume it was already spreading.  (I think that I have mentioned before that he said if it had been a grade 1 or 2 tumor, as 90% of fibrosarcomas are, that we could have assumed the amputation was a curative surgery.)  So then I had to really consider the chemo.  And it came down to that if he didn’t react well to it, we could always stop.

So we moved forward.  Then the scare came with his heart and I started thinking, “CRAP!  I went forward with this, and now he is going to die of a heart problem from the chemo!  I messed up!!!”  But that isn’t going to happen.  Yes, his heart is under functioning; but it isn’t life threatening at this point.  We will watch it; but for now we aren’t even medicating.

Overall, Spencer still has a VERY high quality of life.  He slips sometimes.  He has AWFUL gas sometimes.  He has thrown up a few times.  But he still runs around with the kids.  He still wants to hang out with me.  He really hasn’t slowed down at all.  He is happy.  He does not seem sick!

And as I posted about, we are now more than 2 months past first noticing the first tumor.  That tumor grew from nothing noticeable to huge in 2 months or less.  And here we are, more than 2 months post amputation.  7 weeks into chemo, and there is no obvious tumor.

So I was talking to my husband about it.  Who knows if there is a tumor somewhere growing.  But if there is, I’d have to guess that the chemo has slowed it down since we can’t see it.  So, I’m going with either the chemo has killed the cancer off and it isn’t coming back, or it has at least slowed down the tumor growth.  And it has bought Spencer quite a bit of time.  Who knows how much; but I can say that we are 5-7 weeks past the estimate for when he would have needed to be put to sleep had we done nothing, and he is like a healthy, happy dog.  So for me, the chemo, is worth it.  I’m ready to be done with it, not to have to drive across Atlanta once per week for him to get a treatment.  Definitely ready to not be spending all of this money every week.  But it is all worth it.  Because he is kicking ass so far!!

And a funny aside…  Spencer is kenneled when no one is home.  We do this for several reasons, partly because we don’t want him chasing the cat around; but also because we don’t want him sneaking onto the furniture.  The other day our house keeper accidentally left him out of the kennel when she left.  I commented to my husband that Spencer obviously had not gotten on the couch (you would be able to tell), that maybe we could stop kenneling him when we aren’t home.  Then yesterday morning I was sitting in the family room.  I had a headache and it was early morning.  I had the lights off.  I watched Spencer walk over to the area where his bed usually is in that room (it had been temporarily moved), then he looked at the nearby recliner (my favorite chair, it is a nice Lazy Boy, definitely NOT something I want him sitting in), he stepped up on the chair and laid right down.  (Honestly, if I hadn’t seen him do it, I never would have thought he would fit – this isn’t one of those big recliners, it looks like a moderate sized arm chair, and he is a pretty big dog.)  I immediately told him, “no sir!  you get down RIGHT NOW.”  He looked at me like I was crazy and got down.  I have since realized that he had never TRIED to get on the furniture that I knew of, so I have never actually taught him NOT to do it.  I guess I need to get to work on that.

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