19 Months Out of Radiation

And Honey's lymph nodes and lungs are still all clear :) She jumped up on the reception desk when we walked into the vet's office and ran over to the receptionist, stepped over her keyboard and licked her face. This is my 9 (SOON TO BE 10) year old dog with cancer. And arthritis. And cataracts. Who's blind in one eye. She remembered exactly what we wanted on the scale, and climbed up in the chair in the exam room to sit between us. Spoiled freaking dog.

She still can’t breathe out of her nose, and one of our friends suggested Benadryl. While it hasn’t magically reopened her sinuses, it’s for sure helped her sleep sounder and longer, and magically, we’re able to stick a ball in her mouth once instead of 5 times during the night. This means we get a full night’s sleep as well, and it is BEAUTIFUL.

Summer of the Hunndog - 2009

Honey helping me eat salmon sushi at an outdoor sushi place in Larchmont

Howdy! Summer out here is HOT. I know I should have expected that, it being summer and all, but C’s family came to visit and I was at least 100 every day. I had to arm wrestle a woman at kmart for the last table fan, which we’ve owned for about 5 days and hasn’t been turned off yet. The fires haven’t helped. It was cruddy and smuggy and yeech for a few days, and the station fire was clearly visible from our roof. One of our neighbors also had a heart attack, and since he has Carmine, a 12 year old 65 pound fluffy mutt with a pinched nerve who gets along with Honey, we figured we were the best option for him while his pack was in the hospital recovering. It took about 2 weeks, and by that point Carmine and Honey were well and truly a pack. I was never more than 7 inches from an old hot dog. I’d take a shower and by the time I was finished they’d both be standing in the bathroom looking at me like ‘omg it’s got her, what are we gonna do?!?’ While Carmine was with us, Honey developed a urinary tract infection. She woke me up at about 4 am and asked to go out, which is WAY out of character. I woke C up because I was nervous to go outside at 4 am, and made him promise to watch us from the window while we walked. I got Honey and Carmine on leashes and we went downstairs and out front and while they were sniffing around for a suitable place to tinkle, one of the homeless people who make a living out of collecting cans and turning them in for the recycle fee started yelling at me. I think she wanted to me let in the locked parking lot to go through the building’s recycle bins, but as soon as she shouted and started to walk towards me, both dogs went NUTS. I’ve known Carmine for 3 years and never heard him bark before. Both he and Honey were at the very end of their leashes snarling. I’ve been taking care of Honey and thinking how fragile she is for so long that I totally forgot she was such a good guard dog. When she as about 2, someone tried to break into a house she was staying in, they had unscrewed about half the bars that were over the window, and Honey broke the window out with her nose. I know this because she had a tiny cut, the glass was broken outwards, and the hole in the window was nose-shaped. Needless to say, nobody ever broke in.

Honey on C's chair, on C's shirt, with a ball he gave her in her mouth

Carmine the floofy dog

The most surprising part of all this was that Honey was ok with Carmine in her space. She let us love on him and even let him on the bed (once, and very briefly) but wasn’t at all mean. I have to admit I was worried that she would be sad when Carmine finally went home, but that happened Monday and she doesn’t seem at all fussed, despite the PLAYING they did Sunday and Monday. I was shocked. Normally (well, since cancer) she exists to regulate and prevent play in other dogs, but she did that frisk / front legs down and butt up, tail waving combo in his direction. C witnessed the phenom first and was all ‘LINDSAYOMGCOMEHERERIGHTNOWYOUWONTBELIEVETHIS’ and I almost fainted. It’s been years since I’ve seen her do that to another dog (she does it to us like 3 times a day). She has been having some trouble breathing through her nose lately, and we increased her prednisone to 10 mg a day. This means she gets a charge out of barking at joggers and GOD FORBID a dog walk by on the sidewalk where she can hear its tags jingling. But so far it’s making breathing easier. In fact, I just got a text that says ‘modified ball breathage’ so that’s a step in the right direction J she will sleep for a while with the ball in her mouth, but as soon as it falls out, she wakes us up to make her feel better. Last night I got sleep in 2 hour blocks. Not fun.

Visiting her friend Arnette a month or so ago.

my... what a delightful toy...

She’s also – drumrooooooollll – 20 months out from her diagnosis!! So awesome. She’s actually due for her every three months xrays pretty soon. I’ll update again when I know how her lungs look.

The last thing that squeaky hedgehog will EVER see...

THE NIGHT VISION HUN!!!!

tramadol stepped down, and Hun feel awesome. awesome enough to kill poor hedgie. I did this with a mac, so I have a feeling the pics will be messed up. 

June 18th - 4 months out of radiation and happy as a dog wiht her own couch...

I seriously can’t believe it’s been over a month since I posted here. I guess it was easier at first, when she was feeling different every day, but now it’s just like we have the Hun back, except maybe a little more playful. I keep thinking that maybe she knows she’s got cancer and is living with a little more energy than before, but whenever I share this idea with other people, they tend to tell me that she was probably feeling a little sickly before we noticed something was wrong.

Quick recap in case you’ve just joined us: my guy and I boarded Honey when we went to FL for xmas/Hanukkah. When we dropped her off, she was fine. When we picked her up, she was so sick. We did two rounds of antibiotics and then the vet found a lump in her hard palate. It was a tumor, and we did a month of radiation, then two weeks of the worst side effects ever. I go back and forth between kicking myself for boarding her, and being glad we did because she would have probably had a much more advanced cancer if she hadn’t developed the secondary infection which initially led us to the vet.

Anyways, Honey’s beyond spoiled. The longest period of time she’s been alone since January this year is about 4 hours. She’s also sleeping on her own bed again and best of all, SHE CAN BREATHE OUT OF HER NOSE so I can sleep. It’s fantastic. Last weekend her Zadie was here for father’s day and she played fetch with him for about 3 days straight, and insisted on sleeping on the air mattress with him instead of on her couch (yes, HER couch. A neighbor moved out and gave it to us, and it’s exactly honey-sized). The only lingering problem we seem to be having is her eye – her left eye was in the beam of the radiation and the tear duct is permanently destroyed. We give her cyclosporine eye drops daily, and they’re actually bringing back her ability to produce tears, but it probably won’t ever be 100%. She’s also learned that the eye drops feel good so it’s supereasy to give them to her. Other than that, the radiation side effects cleared up, and although it took almost 3 months out from the last treatment to get there, she can breathe normally again. She’s also gaining back the weight she lost, and we’re actually at the point now where we can’t see her ribs any more. I think that might have had something to do with all those slices of muenster she’s getting as treats…. She’s also got ALL her face hair back, and it’s about half white half brown. We were assured that if it came back at all it would be all white, so I’m taking the salt-and-pepper effect to be a good thing.

And since she was diagnosed in January, and given 2 months, she would have died 3 months ago. Instead, today I get to go home and play fetch and cuddle with her while we lay around like slobs and watch Deadliest Catch.

YEEEEEEEEEEEAH - best May 7th ever. EVER.

So 7 days of horrible sleep and calling Honey 'tripod' even though she wasn't in the least fussed by the biopsy were finally over at around 2 this afternoon when the vet called and told me the tumor was BENIGN!! Now I guess we just call her ‘lumpy’ or ‘bride of Frankenstein’ due to the scars that look like stitches. Her breathing has changed in the last 2 or 3 days – she’s breathing out of her nose a teensy bit more, which is fantastic ‘cause its heading the right way, but she’s starting to spit the ball out and her sleep is suffering. We have to wait until she’s about half out before prying open her mouth and sticking the ball in. Fortunately, she’s incredibly tolerant. I have a feeling the cuddling and telling her how good she is for 10 minutes helps, too. Nonetheless, Cam is on an expedition to various pet stores looking for a slightly smaller ball that might let her keep her mouth a little more closed, and maybe a bit more comfy.

For those of you who know Honey, she did two very reassuring things in the last 2 days – Sunday she found a plastic water bottle (god knows where) and would have annihilated it if I hadn’t intervened, and this afternoon she and Cameron found a basketball and Cameron text messaged me “Honey has a new basketball to play with. I think it’s gonna be an awesome toy – very sturdy” at 3:57:12 pm today and then at 3:58:35 I got “never mind, shark dog ate it” YAY HONEY!!

Oh, and this weekend we went to a help a friend move (translation: we sat around and drank wine and looked at her boxes) and Honey made sure to completely and thoroughly inspect every one, then requisitioned the couch throw pillows, made a nest, and passed out. The pillows were destined for Goodwill so she even got to take them home.

I’m going home to feed her some leftover Passover macaroons.

"If you hadn't told me how sick she was, and sent all those pictures, I wouldn't be able to tell - she's just a little bit greyer around the face"

That’s a direct quote from my friend Mark who hasn’t seen Honey in about a year. She spent yesterday evening doing the ‘someone came to see me two-step’ around his knees and then (very subtly) rubbing her slobbery orange ball all over him, which is how she entices you to play fetch. It was probably the best thing I’ve ever heard. And it dawned on me that she’s acting almost exactly like she did pre-cancer. Our relationship has changed significantly since she got sick – Cameron and I have altered our schedules so that she isn’t alone normally – Sunday we went to a bbq and we couldn’t bring her (the host had dogs that weren’t friendly) and she was alone for 4 hours, which is the longest she’s been alone since November 2007. She’s definitely more attached to us; she would never sleep the whole night on our bed before and now that’s her primary main objective (this will have to change, because we don’t have AC and 100 degrees is way too hot to cuddle, even if she really really wants to). Also she’s more tolerant of letting me do things to her that she would never have allowed previously. I can stick my fingers in her mouth now, and she doesn’t mind – when that was something that drove her batty before cancer. Last night I even pried open her mouth and stuck a ball in, and she just let me. It was great. It’s like she knows that whatever we’re doing to her, uncomfortable as it might be, is going to make her feel better. She comes to us now and asks to be scratched when her face or eyes itch, when last year she would have just gone at her face with her claws, and her eye drops must feel great because she just holds still and lets me tilt her head and pull her eyes open, then when its done she wags her tail and gives me kisses. Two weeks ago she stood still and let us remove the stitches that were inside her ear from biopsy #2. This dog has had chronic ear infections all her life, and her ears are probably the most sensitive place on her body, and she just stood in the kitchen and let me grope around in there with mini scissors and tweezers. Needless to say she got some serious treats after, but I was still stoked. Saturday we took Hon to Larchmont, this snotty little shopping district near our house and got her pinkberry (its essentially frozen yogurt, and its awesome) from Becca. She wore her new ‘cancer survivor’ bandana, and made lots of friends who were also cancer survivors.

UMMMM, is that for me?

Honey loves her some blueberries

I love that she closesher eyes when she really likes what shes eating.

OMG its so good

THANK YOU BECCA!!!

New pictures, hairy face.

Honey sleeping on her daddy

She didn't know what to do - pay attention to the seder plate, the webcam, or the phone

(that sounded like cameron's parents).

Honey in her new KamSew Unique Bandana! They were really fantastic - the only place I could find on the web that had custom doggie bandanas, and they even called me to ask if I'd like her name added to the design.
http://www.kamsewunique.com/


The princessdog way of descending stairs



Us making tuna melts.

She ripped the ball out of the package and refused to let go of it till we were home.

After she healed, before the hair started growing back in.

Honey and I spent our weekend reading and cuddling. We're down to a 1/4 of a prednisone every other day so that's fantastic - she's totally off the painkillers and last night even slept in her own bed and then the couch (!!!). To tell the truth, it freaked us out a little. But just a little.

Cancer Survivor

Looks like we’re out of the woods depression-wise! We’ve been weaning off pred for about a week now and no bad side effects like lethargy or excessive sleeping. Also, Cameron went to New York for three days and she was ok with it (!!!) which is new and exciting. When she was doing radiation she used to freak out if it got past 9 or 10 pm and cam wasn’t home yet – nights he worked were a real joy, and she’s do the ‘where’s daddy’ dance – pacing, whining, the odd howl, heavy panting, sometimes shaking – just a total freak out ‘oh god where is he’ situation. Nothing I did could calm her down, but we dropped him off at the airport and she wasn’t exactly thrilled, there was some watching out the window and then for the first day she would pull me towards the parking lot whenever we went for a walk, looking for him near the car, but last night she even slept in her own bed all night, which is unfreakingheardof. I worked from home (LOVE that my job lets me do that) Wednesday and Thursday and Cameron’s plane already landed, he’ll probably be home in like 35 minutes. Wish I could be there to see the festival of daddy has returned Honey’s going to throw when she sees him.

Her hair is almost grown in now, I’ll take some pictures tonight of the white-faced Hon. The coolest part, though, is that some of the hair is coming back in BROWN and we were assured that it would be completely white if it came back at all. Wunderdog! She also looks lovely in her new ‘cancer survivor’ bandana – which she is now, a bona fide cancer survivor. I think I even saw her breathing out of her nose a little over the last few days, and she seems to have more of a sense of smell. The only variable that’s still really up in the air is the tumor shrinkage – radiation kills the cells when they try to replicate, so they won’t die until they try and grow, so it can take up to 3 months for the tumor to shrink all that it’s going to. We finished on February 29th so today is April 18th – we have 40 days left until we can reasonable assume it’s as small as it’s going to get. The catch is this – if it doesn’t shrink enough for her to breathe out of her nose, we may have to have it debulked, which is a surgery where they would go in and remove the majority of the tumor so she could have a clear airway. The other thing that would go wrong is if it shrinks TOO much, because it metastasized through the roof of her mouth (that means it ate the bone that separates her mouth from her sinuses – her hard palate) so if it goes away to the point where there’s no tumor to form this barrier, she will have to have surgery to create one and keep her sinuses free of food / other stuff in her mouth. Please keep your fingers crossed for perfect shrinkage.

In new-place news, it’s awesome but our furniture doesn’t fit and Cameron still hates my grey Formica table, but it looks WAY too much like an airstream to throw it away. We’re starting to actually get some stuff settled and decorated decently, but ultimate ‘our house is perfect ness’ is a long way off. However, it is starting to look like a nursery, which I LOVE!