Friday Honeypicture

I realized yesterday that the wallpaper on my phone was Honey from like 2 months ago, when she didn't have any hair, so I took one of her with Cam, and I think it's pretty cute. Honey's smiling (she just got to ride with to the grocery store) and she's mid-wag, which makes any picture better :)

She has her right eye closed because of the sun. The left eye is the one with the less than perfect tear duct.

New Honeypics

Some pics of Honey being a love - she quit giving kisses for a while after she had radiation, I think it was too painful and then she just remembered it as being painful, but she's being a kissmonster again which is awesome.



AWWWWW


For good measure, my cactus about to bloom...

and a pic of the princess on the couch, just before I left this morning. look at all the fur on her face! I love it.

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.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

So Honey’s at the vet getting biopsy #3 – left rear foot, between her middle toes. So far I have a perfect record on gut feeling knowledge of malignancy - I thought her sinuses were, and ear was not, so I’m at 100%. This one, I’m not sure about, but if I had to guess I think I’d go with benign, but I’m not sure if that’s what I want or what I honestly feel about it. I’ll update when I find out.

*************1:06 pm

still waiting

*************3:12 pm

Cameron picked her up and she seems ok - we have to wait for lab work to come back. Tehy x-ray'd her lungs and they're still clear, she sounds great, and tear production is UP!! WOO HOO RESTASIS!!! now we'll make it through this last lump and we're home free (hopefully).

"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!!!

Honey LOOOOOVES Becca

and i have no idea how to rotate this video.