Friday, February 1, 2008

Diagnosis and the vet

We saw the radiation oncologist yesterday – (http://www.cityofangelsvets.com/) his offices are nicer than any doctor’s office I’ve ever been in, by far, and the staff / doctors were all incredibly nice. Honey wasn’t afraid of it one bit, which was odd seeing as the last time she went to the vet (Monday the 28th) she was sedated, biopsies were taken, and she had to spend the night. The practice ONLY treats cancer patients, there were a bunch of prednisone-chunky half-haired doggies in the waiting room and they all seemed pretty happy to be there, so we took that as a good sign.

We met with the vet for about 2 hours, and he feels she’s a good candidate for ‘definitive radiation’ which means radiation treatment with the goal of remission or tumor elimination. We’re not sure if her cancer is an oral chondrosarcoma or a nasal chondrosarcoma, which means there’s no way of telling if it started in her mouth or in her nose, but it’s in both now. The survival rates for these types of cancers are comparable – 1-2 years for nasal with treatment, 16-24 months for oral with treatment. We decided to go for it, and she will get 20 doses of radiation – once daily, Monday – Friday for 4 weeks. We hope to start Monday, the 4th, which is the 8th anniversary of the day I adopted her from the humane society in Leon County, but it depends on her ‘plan’ being completed by then. They have a 3 view CT scan of her tumor and will enter it into a program (developed for human treatment) that will determine the best angles for the radiation to be directed, and the position she will need to be in for the treatment. Her first appointment should last an hour or so, where they arrange her position and take a bunch of xrays to make sure the tumor is in the target area, but after that the treatments will take about 15 minutes. They twilight her (thing laughing gas, like the dentist) and put her in the position the plan formulated, and then zap her. It’s just gas, so it’s not total anesthesia and not as dangerous.

The doctor is one of like 16 board certified radiation oncologists in the US, and he is directly responsible for the radiation of every animal. Everyone who deals in any way with the radiation and plan design is board certified, ahs had experience in both human and animal radiation treatment and has over 4 years experience of working with him directly, so we’re confident they know what they’re doing. He aspirated the lymph node nearest the tumor to make sure it hasn’t spread there, and gave her some anti-inflammatories and a sleeping pill (she’s having trouble breathing out of her nose, and for some reason WILL NOT breathe out of her mouth) so the plan was the antinflamatories would make it easier for her to breathe, maybe open up more of an airway, and the sleeping pills would zonk her to the point where she wouldn’t worry about breathing and wouldn’t wake up every minute or so to gasp for air, because her body will naturally open her mouth and take care of it. Too bad that’s not what happened at all – she spent the entire night trying to breathe out of a completely clogged nasal passage, and every 15-20 seconds would gasp for air (really loudly) through her mouth, but still wouldn’t open her mouth to breathe. Cameron and I spent the entire night holding her lips up so she could breathe out of the sides of her mouth and maybe get a little sleep. Result was that we got none and she got a teensy bit of gasping snooze.

I just spoke to the vet and apparently we didn’t give her enough of a does, as we only gave her half a pill, so tonight I’m supposed to give her more and completely wreck her so she’ll sleep. He also said that there is a chance the tumor is growing so fast that it’s occluding her nasal passages, which would be “really really rare” but if that were the case it would affect her chances of a remission. There’s just no good news, is there? Anyway, I’m feeling awful for giving her a dose which made her suffer all night, and freaked her out so much, so tonight ill give her a full pill and “watch her closely for the first hour or so to make sure she’s still breathing” well, you can just rock me to sleep tonight. Thank god tomorrow’s Saturday and it doesn’t matter if I’m a totally and complete zombie. Maybe I can get someone to come over and sit with me and the (hopefully sleeping) Hun tonight while Cameron’s at work, so I don’t lose my shit and freak her out in the process.

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Hope you're okay, Lindsay. Sorry about Honey.

Lil Bologna said...

I am very sorry to hear about the chondrosarcoma. My 11 yr old daughter was diagnosed with Chondrosarcoma in 2006. We belong to an online support group, and we even have some dogs in our midst. Knowledge is power and knowing what it is may help you when helping your beloved pet.

I hope you consider joining us.

Hugs and best wishes!