Hey, Connie, How is Daniel Doing?

It has been almost exactly six months since our eleven-year-old greyhound, Daniel, was diagnosed with T-cell Lymphoma of the spleen.  You would never know by looking at him now that he was anything but a happy older gentleman dog.  I am thankful for the expert care he has received from his oncologist.  Look at that sweet face!

"Mom, is that cheeseburger for me?"

 

 

Daniel has received six doses of CCNU.  It is an oral chemotherapy drug, which is powerful against his cancer, but usually has minimal side effects.  (liver toxicity and low white blood cell and/or platelets are the most common.)  Only once did he feel even the least bit puny after one of his treatments.  Other than that, you would never know by his behavior that he was receiving treatment of any kind.

 

He has been steadily regaining the weight he lost earlier in the year before his diagnosis and treatment.  My normally 70-pound dog bottomed out at 58 pounds.  He is up to 65 pounds, as of his last vet visit on Christmas Eve. (that's why he's wearing his red velved holiday collar.)

 

"Yes, Daniel, it is.  Here you go, Sweetheart.  You were such a good boy for the doctor."

 

 

Daniel is the dog that picked me seven years ago.  I remember that day so well ... the little voice in my gut was screaming, pleading, begging me understand that this precious boy was meant to be mine ... what a wise little voice! 

 

Cat safe?  Yes, he is!  

 

 

As far as Daniel's lymphoma goes, we are making his treatment decisions one vet visit at a time.  He has a less-common low-level type of lymphoma, and we are taking our cues from him about how to proceed.  So far, he continues to be in remission ... eating well, gaining weight ... with a cheery attitude and a great quality of life. 

Ruby's Perspective ... Going to the Doctor with Daniel

Hi, Everybody.  Ruby here.

Daniel had an appointment with his cancer doctor today.  Mom took me with them because no one else was at home to watch me, and she didn't want me to be in my crate for such a long time.  (She's a really good Mom and she loves me very much ... I'm glad I picked her.)

 

 

I like Daniel's doctor.  She hugged with me and scratched my ears and told me that I will be a wonderful therapy dog.  Then she told Mom that Daniel is doing even better than he was when she saw him three weeks ago.  That made Mom happy.  I like it when Mom is happy.

 

Daniel had to go to the "back" (wherever that is) so he could get his special medicine.  The doctor said that he was getting a meatball ... I like meatballs, but I don't need the special medicine so I can't have one.  While Daniel was gone, Mom and I sat on the floor and waited.

 

 

 

When we left the doctor, Mom told us that she was going to have lunch with her friend Deborah, and that she was going to leave us in the car for a little while.  She also told us that she would take us to get a special treat when she got back.  (Daniel gets treats whenever he goes to the doctor ... he tries to hide it, but I can tell because I can smell it on his breath when he comes home.)

 

Our next stop was a place called The Drive Through.  Mom told the man in the little box that she wanted "a double cheeseburger plain, please".  Mom broke the cheeseburger into little pieces and she took turns giving some to Daniel and some to me.  This was the first time I ever tasted cheeseburger, and I really like it!

 

 

 

It was a long day for us.  There was a lot of traffic on the highway, and it took us longer than it normally would to get home.  I didn't mind, though, because Mom and Daniel and I got to spend more time together riding in the car on a beautiful sunny day.  I like riding in the car.

 

Feeling Better

Here is an update, so all of Daniel's fans can keep up with how he is doing.  (If you missed the post last week where I detailed how Daniel's lymphoma was diagnosed, you can click HERE to get the whole story.)

Daniel had his first chemo treatment last Monday (July 30).  The next day, I started giving him the prescribed doses of Prednisone.  For the first couple of days, he seemed a bit out of sorts ... hungry and thirsty and having to go out to pee every three hours.  This settled down by Thursday, and on Friday I began to see glimpses of the return my sweet, happy boy.

Ripping the guts out of squeeky toys used to be one of his favorite activities.  He hasn't torn up a toy in months.  On Friday afternoon, I came home and found this ... shed tears of joy at the sight, yes I did.

I know it was Daniel who did this because Ruby is crated when no one is home.

On Saturday morning, when I let Ruby and him outside before their breakfast, he made a point to seek out and cover Ruby's pee place ... another thing that he hasn't done in quite a while.  When I called him to come inside, he ran (yes, RAN) across the yard to the house.

Sunday evening, The Husband and I treated ourselves to pizza while we watched the Olympics.  As we finished eating, Daniel came over to not-so-subtly remind us that he LOVES pizza crust.  (We call it 'pizza bones'.)

Ruby took the cue and assumed her place beside Daniel, patiently waiting her turn, too.

I am thankful that Daniel hasn't had any of the more serious side effects of his medicine that Dr. Sheafor (the oncologist) warned us about.  He is still painfully thin, though.  I took him to the vet yesterday for a blood test (to check that his white cell count wasn't too low from the chemo), and he is pretty much the same weight he was last week ... I was hoping for a slight gain ... oh, well.

Bottom line ... he obviously feels better, he is eating well, sleeping comfortably, and he is not having uncomfortable or adverse reactions to his medication ... for this, I am thankful.  I am most thankful to see Daniel happy and playing.  Perhaps this means that he is responding to the chemo and beating back the cancer ... 

I must remember to take things one day at a time ... don't look to far ahead ... live in the moment and treasure every second.

Daniel and I thank each of you for your kind notes and comments.  You are all so kind!

Daniel Update

Our 11-year-old greyhound, Daniel, has not been feeling well since early May.  He initially went to our regular vet because he was under the weather and nauseous.  He has been known to eat weird things (we used to have to keep a very close eye on cat toys and baby socks), and I thought he may have had an intestinal blockage.

I love this photo so much that I use it as my Facebook profile photo.

X-rays revealed no foreign objects in his digestive tract, but did show that he had an enlarged spleen.  Off we went that afternoon to the specialty vet for an ultrasound, to make sure that we weren't dealing with a mass of some sort (which is what took our Emma in October).  The ultrasound showed a slight thickening of his stomach in one spot, two things behind his stomach that appeared to be large lymph nodes, and no mass in his enlarged spleen.  The radiologist took needle samples of his spleen and liver, and these samples were sent for pathology review.  We received results of the biopsy the next week ... benign.

Daniel does the best he can to deal with cleaning lady day.

Daniel continued to feel kind of lousy, and he was losing weight.  My 70-pound dog was down to 63 pounds ... and his normally slim greyhound figure was now marked by prominent ribs and bony hips.  Daniel has kept his enthusiastic appetite, so I significantly increased the amount of food he was getting, hoping to stop the weight loss.  Back to the vet we went for more tests.
 

My sweet boy, sitting in the sunshine.

Waiting for test results, and missing phone calls and messages had me on edge for weeks.  None of Daniel's symptoms or results pointed toward any one diagnosis, so we began to rule out things one by one.  With a negative biopsy on the first sample, we sent blood samples to test for various tick-borne diseases ... which can cause spleen enlargement and anemia.  Pending the results of the tick tests, Daniel was put on a two week course of Doxycycline, just in case.  Tick tests were negative, and we were no closer to an answer.

Such a sweet face!

The vet suggested that we do another ultrasound to see if his spleen and/or stomach looked different than they had two months before ... they didn't ... no significant change at all.  More biopsy and blood samples were taken and sent for analysis.  The biopsy, again, was negative.

Sleepy boy.

Right before we left on our trip in mid-July, I authorized some additional tests on extra samples that the doctor had taken of Daniel's spleen during the second ultrasound.  It's called a PARR Assay, and it tests the spleen samples at the microbiological level, looking for genetic markers for various types of lymphoma.  I got a message on my cell phone last week from the doctor ... Daniel's tests showed that the sample was positive for T-cell Lymphoma.

He's so tolerant.  :)

On Friday, while we were in Fairbanks and had Internet access, I looked up the phone number for the oncologist that we saw while Maggie was being treated for lymphoma.  Dr. Sheafor and I communicate very well, and I knew that she was the perfect person to consult about Daniel's condition.  We made an appointment for this past Monday morning.

My friend Gale sent me this photo, and the two below, while Daniel was staying at her house while we were in Alaska.

Dr. Sheafor examined Daniel and reviewed all of his test results.  She explained that  T-cell Lymphoma is usually a much more aggressive disease than what we are dealing with.  She didn't doubt the test results ... instead, she said that Daniel's history fits with one of the uncommon low-grade lymphomas of the spleen. 

Daniel wanted to play with ALL of the toys in the toy box.

Daniel now has a treatment plan, CCNU chemotherapy with prednisone, and I have hope that this will make him feel better.  I will take Daniel to see the oncologist every three weeks, for 4 - 5 treatments, then we will try to stretch the interval to every 6 - 8 weeks.

Same as it was with Maggie, who was on CCNU three years ago for a different type of lymphoma, Daniel is handling treatment very well so far.  The prednisone is making him hungry and thirsty ... the hungry part may allow him to put on some of his lost weight, and the thirst makes him drink more and he needs more frequent turnouts.

He had quite a collection ... and a whole lot of fun.

The hard fact is this ... Daniel has cancer.  While this is crappy news, it could be worse.  It appears to be a type of cancer that may respond to treatment ... I am grateful for that.  It's comforting to finally know what we are dealing with, and to have a plan in place with a doctor that I trust. 

(I'm telling Daniel's story in such detail, because it may help someone else in the future ... as they search the Web, trying to find out what could possibly be wrong with their dog.)

Happy Birthday, Maggie!

On April 1 (or thereabouts) our dear Maggie will turn 11.  She came to us at approximately four months old, as a kitten from the PetsMart adoption area.  There was something about that little calico kitten that spoke to me ... I knew she was mine.  It must have been the eyes.

Our first few months with Maggie were fairly normal ... then she started having weird health issues.  Over the course of the summer, our vet ran test after test, (FIV, negative.  FeLV, negative.  Everything we could think of, negative.) but no diagnosis was to be had.  In November 2002, Maggie got worse.  She was listless and refused to eat and we went to our regular vet ... who immediately sent us to the emergency department at Southpaws (a veterinary specialty practice).

Blood tests revealed that Maggie was dangerously anemic and her blood platelet count was only 10% of what is should have been.  She spent two days in Southpaws' intensive care unit, being treated with fluids and large doses of steroids.  Even when I brought her home, I still wasn't sure that she was going to make it.  All she wanted to do was 'hide' in my bathtub ... so she hid, and I sat in the bathtub with her and cradled her and tried to entice her to eat.

After a few more very dicey days, Maggie began to slowly regain her strength.  More tests revealed that Maggie had Immune Mediated Hemolytic Anemia, an autoimmune disorder where Maggie's own immune system attacked her blood cells ... and she would most likely require steroids and Cyclosporin, an expensive immune suppression drug, for the rest of her life.  (IMHA is very rare in cats.  My vet has only seen one other case in her whole career, and those owners chose to euthanize, so we were operating in almost uncharted territory.)

Maggie responded well to treatment, and life around here was pretty normal ... until right before Maggie turned eight.  I was petting her one day and I found a lump on her neck underneath her chin.  Back to the vet we went ... Lymphoma ... probably caused by her years on immune suppression drugs.  We scheduled delicate surgery to remove the cancerous lymph node (Bless you, Dr. Bradley) and a biopsy to determine where we went from there.  Biopsy results ... Hodgkins' Type Lymphoma, which is rare in cats and was treatable. 

Maggie received six rounds of chemotherapy (CCNU, to be exact) and she has been practically perfect ever since.  So good, in fact, that her oncologist weaned her off the Cyclosporin last year, because Maggie's bloodwork was the best it has ever been.  The doctor theorizes that the chemotherapy probably knocked out both the cancer AND the agent that was causing her IMHA.  Maggie will always be on a low dose of steroids, though, because her immune system will never behave normally.  Half of a methylprednisolone tablet every two or three days before breakfast, and she's good to go.

I tell this story every year to place Maggie's history online, so anyone who has a cat with a similar diagnosis can know that there may be hope and a future with an IMHA cat.  When Maggie was diagnosed, there was nothing out there to read to offer any kind of reassurance.  There IS hope, and Maggie is proof.

When Maggie was at our vet's for her regular check-up recently, her doctor brought a visiting resident student into the room to meet us.  The doctor looked at me, pointed to the student, and said, "She's never going to see another one of these ... tell her Maggie's story."

It's amazing to think that Maggie has been with us this long, considering how much she's been through.  The force is strong in this one, as they said in Star Wars.  If you have visited here, you have met Maggie ... because she greets everyone at the door, demanding attention and begging to be petted. 

There's just something about Maggie that is wise beyond her limitations as a cat ... perhaps she's doing some evolutionary pennance, spending lives as a cat as punishment for some sort of world domination plot in a past life.  I wouldn't be surprised if this was true.

Happy Birthday, my dear Maggie!!  Eleven already?  It can't be.  It was only a few days ago that I was standing in PetsMart, cradling you and trying to shoosh my inner voice that was screaming at me to take you home.  Our home is a richer place because of you ... but you know that already.