well, another day, another adoption.
Jazz went to his forever home today. A very nice lady looking for a nice older calm greyhound. They really seemed to get along great. 🙂
Congrats Mr Jazz.
well, another day, another adoption.
Jazz went to his forever home today. A very nice lady looking for a nice older calm greyhound. They really seemed to get along great. 🙂
Congrats Mr Jazz.
Twyla started limping on friday. Didn’t want to go down stairs or walk around much this weekend. So, first thing this morning I took her into my vet.
They isolated the problem as being in her shoulder, and suggested X-rays. They took a few right then and developed them.
The bone on the top of her leg where it meets up with her shoulder is “not normal”. It could be a bone infection of some kind, but is much more likely to be bone cancer.
🙁
She goes in wed for a bone biopsy to find out what we are dealing with. If it’s an infection she can get treated with antibiotics, so thats the best case.
If it’s bone cancer the treatment is amputation + chemo. Reading up on things it appears that the median survival times for that are pretty good.
Will have to see what happens. 🙁
Well, Twyla was out at the vets all day today to get her biopsy done. It went pretty well, they were able to get some good samples. She bled a LOT they said. They did let her come home tonight, which was nice. She’s pretty darn zonked out though. She can’t figure out how to lay down without using the shoulder/leg that was biopsyed. Hopefully she will feel better after a lot of sleeping. I do have to take her in in the morning to get checked and an IV connection removed.
Should get the results of the biopsy friday or monday, and can try and figure out next steps then. 🙁
Well, went in this morning and the doc had gotten the path report back.
It’s osteo. 🙁
He is a nice guy and knows the usual treatment for this (amputation, followed by chemo), but suggested that they might know more up to the minute plans up at CSU.
So, I have an appt tomorrow morning at CSU for her to get looked at. I suspect they will say the same thing, but they might have some diffrent chemo drugs or plan
that will have a better chance of doing good. It’s hard to know what to do, but she is so happy and full of life I have to do everything I can until she lets me know it’s time to let go.
Well, went up to CSU this morning for my appointment there. I thought I was going to be late with all the traffic and stuff on I25, but I managed to make it just about right on time. CSU is a teaching vet center, so first I had 2 students check us in and get all the history and such. One of them looked at said she had met both Twyla and me before.
We figured out that it was a few years ago when Twyla was in a behavior class that she took. 🙂 Twyla was very happy for all the attention.
After they got all the information, they went and presented to the on-call staff doctor. He came in and we discussed options.
Really there weren’t many, here’s the plan:
– Twyla is staying at CSU today and tonight.
– They are going to do a full blood panel and look at her kidney values (She had been on kidney meds for a long time)
– They are going to do some more x-rays and see if there are any signs of cancer in the lungs.
– They are going to do a ‘Bone scan’. Basically give her some radioactive junk that attracts to signs of heavy cellular activity and shows up. This will tell us if there are any tumors on other legs, or somewhere else.
If all that looks good, they are going to amputate her left front leg tomorrow. My vet could have done it down here, but they mentioned that they do about 2 a week up there and really know how to do it. with any luck, she will get to come home tomorrow night.
Then, after recovering from that (10-14 days) and getting her stiches out, we will do some Chemo. The drug of choice is a thing called ‘cisplantin’, but it’s very hard on the kidneys, so there are two others that we might use, or even a combo of both.
I have heard back on the x-rays (no visible tumors aside from the leg one). Hurray!
I have heard back on the blood work (slightly high values on a few things, but within the acceptable range). Hurray!
I should hear back on the bone scan later tonight.
Wish her a safe and uneventfull surgery tomorrow.
UPDATE 16:46: The bone scan results are back, and the only thing showing in it is the cancer on her leg. Thats a good sign. Hurray!
Well, all the tests came back good tuesday, so she spent the night at CSU
tuesday night and was scheduled for her amputation wed sometime between
11am and 4pm.
The surgery took place toward the end of that window, but everything went
very well. No complications at all. She was pretty zonked out with pain meds
wed night, so I decided not to visit.
Thursday morning she has been up and walking around. She’s been whining
for attention (which is very typical for her, yea!). At my regular vet
when she has gone in for dental or the like, they aways send her home
as soon as she’s up since otherwise she starts whining at the top of
her lungs for someone to come pet her. 🙂
I am planning on going up and picking her up between 3-4pm today.
The CSU folks have been really good. They have called with updates lots of
times and answered all my questions. Dr Duerr knows his stuff, and
the students have all been great.
thanks for all the well wishes from everyone. Will keep you posted.
Thanks again for all the well wishes. 🙂
To take up the story and update you from yesterday:
I got up to CSU and picked up princess Twyla around 5pm.
She walked out with me, and managed to squat and potty on her own
on the way to the car. She had a lot of trouble trying to figure out
how to lay down on the way back, and just stood up the entire time.
We got home and she zonked right out.
She had a bit of a restless night and got up and walked around
a few times, but more pain meds helped her get back to sleep.
She’s spent today just relaxing as well. She ate a bit of
breakfast, and a bit of her dinner. The pain meds do make her
not very hungry.
On the good side she seems to have no problem walking around
(or perhaps it’s hopping 😉 She got up on the couch eariler and
hung out for a while. She was digging in the blankets in her
crate with her one front leg a bit ago.
On the bad side she still has problems figuring out how to
lay down. She was used to circling in a clockwise direction and
then laying down on her left side, but since thats the side
with her incision now, she gets confused about which way to
go and how to lay down. She does figure it out after a while.
Not sure if she will be up for a trip to the park sunday,
but we will see. She is improving more every day.
Twyla continues to improve. She’s hopping around pretty well now.
She even (before I could stop her) jumped up the steps from my yard to
my deck this afternoon.
She ate all her breakfast (after I mixed a can of chicken into her kibble).
She finally pooped. She had been holding it since she got back from
surgery. 🙂
She did her funny dominance behavior to Merlin today. She goes and stands
over them when they are laying down. She doesn’t do anything, just stands there
very close towering over them.
I have been trying to decrease her pain meds. It’s hard to tell when
she is in pain or not. Pesky stoic greyhounds. 🙂
She’s been hanging out on the couches more.
She whined like she was being tortured when I gated her in the bedroom and
took the boy dogs for a walk. She has always been a champion whiner. 😉
In fact I thought at first that she had fallen or otherwise hurt herself,
but she was just mad at being left behind. 🙂
She’s been coming over demanding petting and attention more. Not as much
as usual, but increasing over the last few days.
Well, the week went by pretty fast. Nice and busy at work.
We got a snowstorm thursday night and friday I went up to boulder. Just one thing I would like to say to all the denver/boulder area drivers:
STOP TAILGATING ME! It’s really anoying to be driving in snowy conditions and have some dork 2′ behind me. No one around here leaves any kind of room for stopping.
It’s been a pretty quiet weekend. I went out saturday night and met up with my friend B and his wife at the Steve Crenshaw show. Jammin Joes bar is a true dive bar. The music was quite good though. Steve was in great form. I picked up a cd from him that has on it: “Copy and share with your friends”.
Twyla is doing pretty well. We went out to petsmart the other day. She loved the attention from people there and didn’t have too much trouble walking around.
On the way back she managed to get past me before I could lift her up into the car and jumped right up herself. She was pretty pooped after that thought, so she still needs to get some more strength back. She’s been eating ok, but sometimes missing a meal. Next week we need to get her staples out and schedule her for chemo.
Next weekend is the big “move everything out of my dad’s house” event. Heading down there friday, and back monday. Hopefully Twyla will handle the travel ok, and I won’t have problems hauling a trailer back behind me.
Well, monday we went into my local vet here and got Twylas staples removed. Hurray!
There were some of them that had moved around and he had to dig with some forceps, but she just layed there and let him. Nary a sound.
We talked about Chemo options. He had two folks that he could refer me to down here, but I decided to just go back up to CSU.
It’s not really that far and they have all her records and such.
So, tuesday morning bright and early we went up to CSU (yeah, they got me in that fast. They had a cancel slot open). We talked with a very nice oncologist.
He said the first patient he ever had as a oncologist was a greyhound with a amputated front left leg. Twyla of course did lots of leaning and smoozing with all
the folks in the waiting room. We decided to go with a alternating chemo setup. First up is Carboplatin. It’s recently gotten a lot cheaper, because you can get it as a
generic. She got that one today. Next week we need to do some blood tests and make sure she’s doing ok with it. Then in another 2 weeks she goes in for the other
chemo: Doxorubicin. Then two weeks later the cycle starts again with the Carboplatin. Theres going to be a total of 6 doses (3 of each).
She seems to have handled it just fine. She even ate some dinner a bit ago.