navigating life after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma
I have no idea what we are going to do moving forward, but the bad news makes me even more determined to enjoy as many moments as I can with my girl. Today we went to a really lovely section of river and just enjoyed it with no expectations.
I won’t repeat myself too much from what I say in the video, but just want to state my amazement in how much it helped. I was able to refocus on what is really important, Ellie. Not Ellie’s potential life expectancy, just Ellie.
Just love this pup so much!
I started writing this to give everyone an update on Ellie- she went in today for her 3rd round of chemotherapy, chest x-rays, and an 8 hour serial blood draw. I was going to tell you guys how well she was doing. How we were enjoying the spring weather and excited for summer swimming. I was going to tell you about the new spring lambs we have and how seeing new life was such a joy. I was going to tell you how grateful I felt for Ellie’s recovery and how I needed to take a video of her running, because she runs identical now as she did with 4 legs. I was having fun writing another kind-of boring post because things were going smooth. But then the vet called.
Anyone going through this already knows what I’m going to say, probably. Ellie’s chest x-rays came back with signs of metastasis in her lungs. The original diagnosis was March 9th, and here we are after doing everything not even 3 months later and it’s already progressed, I’m just in utter disbelief. My one saving grace is she’s still at the vet so I can completely meltdown for a few hours.
I knew this was a possibility, all the vets I spoke with and everyone here it was very clear that the median survival rate was a year… That’s median, I’m not great at math, but I knew that means that some get more and some get less… I was prepared for less, I was not prepared for this much less. and I know it’s not over, I know when I go into the vet in a few hours the vet will go over all the options, but now the decisions are going to be more about what am I willing to have her suffer through. I’ve already made her suffer a lot and am already trying to not blame myself for not knowing the future- I would have never done it had I known we would already be facing this. I, like everyone here, thought I had more time. It’s ironic really, I just posted on the forum to someone else that “regardless of what happens you made the best decision you could with the information you had.” Rationally I know it’s good advice, but I want to go and tell my past self to shut up and leave me alone.
I have no answers, no ideas. All my original plans seem so stupid and naïve now. I’m going to go cry some more and hopefully be able to put on a smile for when I go pick-up Ellie. I’ll leave the video up of the lambs, I had put it in before *the call* and it seems cruel to not let you see it, sorry it’s not in better circumstances.
Tuesday was Ellie’s second treatment of carboplatin, and it was the 1st one where she wasn’t sedated (they did a skin biopsy last time) so it was my first time seeing how just the carboplatin affected her. I did give her 1/2 tablet (80mg) of Cerenia because she was showing signs of diarrhea and didn’t have an appetite, but no appetite issues after Tuesday evening- and even then I just had to put chicken broth on her food and she ate. She had a little diarrhea Tuesday evening, but that has cleared up as well. Maybe she didn’t need the cerenia, but honestly at his point I don’t care; if she’s showing any signs of discomfort I’m giving her something because she’s so stoic that if she shows signs it’s probably a lot more severe than it appears. She’s definitely been lower energy even through this morning. I am planning on going out on a mini hike today (if the weather permits) to see if we just need to get out of our routine a little. One bummer, she is onto me with her medication- she doesn’t want to take it with just peanut butter on it at this time. I know from reading on here I shouldn’t put it in her normal food ever because we don’t want her not trusting that so this morning I wrapped it in some ham and that was successful. Thankfully I’m only needing to give her one pill a day at this point (the study drug vismodegib).
Ellie is currently getting treatment at CSU veterinary hospital- it’s a large hospital and as such they have a large waiting room, they have it split into zones, but if it’s busy it can be a little stressful finding a spot where other dogs aren’t trying to get at yours or vice versa. When I first got in all the open spots were way at the back and I was trying to figure out the best way to maneuver back there with my giant puppers. a gentleman at the very front who was waiting for his dog to come back out ended up standing up and giving me his spot, I accepted graciously and we chatted a little. His dog was also a tripawd though I’m not sure if he had cancer or not. He was loving on Ellie and his wife came over and was loving on her as well and commenting about how good she was looking. Ellie being Ellie laid down and presented her belly in expectation of getting all the belly scritches possible, haha. I could tell they were stressed out, but before we could continue chatting the vet came out and was speaking to them. I didn’t hear the whole conversation mostly that their dog was doing just fine and it seemed the woman was worried about how far they could push him in activity. My heart broke because the woman broke down a couple times about not wanting to hurt him and never knowing how far was too far and feeling like an awful pet parent. Obviously I don’t know their circumstances, but I definitely know feeling like an awful parent, there’s just too many unknowns to not feel that way sometimes. Even though I’ve had a relatively easy go of it thus far(and for that I’m so grateful) any discomfort Ellie feels I wish I could take on myself instead ten fold if it meant her being comfortable, and the fact that I can’t makes me feel really guilty still. With that said- it does no good to berate myself for not being able to do the impossible and I continue to re-center myself and just go day by day focus on the good, balance out the bad and forgive myself/allow myself to only do the best I can on that day. We will get through today and be grateful that we don’t have to go back to the vet for 3 whole weeks (not quite true we do have a PT appointment, but that’s a spa day versus getting poked and prodded). Ellie and I can both relax a little more after going in every single week for the past 6 weeks (since the original vet visit where all this started less than 8 weeks ago we’ve gone to 10 different vet appointments- phew). Also- thank you lord to working a remote job with a flexible boss so I wasn’t haven’t to take PTO every time.
[Insert brilliant segue from heavy emotional talk to cute dog toys]
I impulse bought this mental stimulation toy and I’m kind of in love with it. It takes forever to fill (you have to roll each cloth with dog food/treats probably takes 5-7 minutes). It probably takes Ellie about 20ish minutes to get them all and she seems to really enjoy it! I have nothing more to say about it really except that I really need to stop buying these things, as there’s so many ways to make free ones! I just saw a video on “recycling day foraging boxes” that’ll I’ll have to try where you put food in boxes that will be recycled and then nest the boxes within each other and let your dog at it. I’ll have to try it and share when I do!
There’s my update for Miss Ellie! Hopefully my next few posts will be more about the adventures we are starting to go on vs how vet visits go! I hope everyone reading this has a great day and if you are also going through this with your pet my heart goes out to you and wish you all the healthy vibes!
Today marks 6 weeks plus 1 day since Ellie had her amputation!! I’ve officially stopped coddling her and have been trying to catch up on everything I left by the wayside (not overwhelming at all…*cough cough*), but she’s still my number 1! We have had to go to the vet every week ( and sometimes twice ugh) since her surgery for clinical trial blood draws and/or her carboplatin treatment and/or PT. this upcoming Tuesday will be the last one for 3 whole weeks!! I’m so excited! Don’t get me wrong, everyone at CSU has been amazing- but you know you’ve been there too much when you and the front desk staff (of which there are several) knows each other by name.
In PT we have graduated up to more advanced stretches and exercises, most of them are centered around helping Ellie learn how to balance on 3 legs in a safe controlled manner- I keep meaning to take a little video of her doing them, but keep forgetting. the therapist also has me working on her incision site. mostly by lightly rubbing and rolling the skin on either side of the incision. We are trying to break down as much of that fascia/scar tissue as possible. Sometimes if it’s left as is it can pull or pinch which can aggravate nerves and cause pain. Only in the last week or so has Ellie started laying on her incision side (I freaked out when she did it the first time! I was so excited!) and she seems to enjoy me rubbing on the incision, she always lays back and starts to close her eyes, so it must feel good.
Not everything has been quite on the up and up, though. Last week even with being completely off all pain meds Ellie was still “dribbling” urine pretty much all day, and then started having very bad accidents two nights in a row (probably just dribbling all night) I told the vet about it and we did a urinalysis- nothing remarkable came back, no blood in the urine, her white blood cells were barely elevated as of Thursday morning the 27th. Unfortunately I didn’t get these results until late Friday afternoon. I was getting really concerned because she had started going from a dead sleep to jumping up yelping and looking around to see what “bit” her, it seemed to be happening more and more not less and less. The vet explained that even without obvious signs from the urinalysis is could still be a UTI, but it also could be spay incontinence which is really common is dogs Ellie’s age and up. At first I was convinced it couldn’t be spay incontinence, because it was just too big of a coincidence that it started right when she also started going on all these medications, the vet gently replied that it might have been happening before but I am only noticing it now and it was intensified with the medications- fair point. So the next step was getting a sterile sample of urine for them to do a culture on to see if it was in fact a UTI and if so what bacteria it was so we could use the most effective antibiotic to help clear it up. Cool… those cultures take about a week to get back…and she can’t be on any antibiotics because it could give the culture a false negative. So there I was on a Friday evening with a obviously uncomfortable dog who was involuntarily peeing all over the house. The vet ended up offering to prescribe Clavacillin which is the antibiotic that covers far and above most UTIs, if she was showing signs of improvement within 48 hours then we have our answer, if she wasn’t we could still do the culture, but might have varied results or could look into something like Prion or estrogen replacement for spay incontinence. At first I was happy, I had convinced myself it was a UTI and this would help. Then I dug into her symptoms a little more, and it started to look less and less like a UTI and more and more like spay incontinence- she didn’t strain to urinate (when she would do it outside), she wasn’t in pain urinating, no blood in the urine. I started second guessing and actually set up an appointment with my regular vet to get a 2nd opinion, but then ended up cancelling it and giving the antibiotic a shot. It made me anxious because I’m very aware of how the overuse of antibiotics is creating all these resistant bacteria and I would hate to add to the issue even if it was on a small scale. Anyway- all of this to say that the antibiotics totally worked as of Sunday night (It’s Wednesday evening as I write this) she hasn’t had any accidents inside at all. She is also back on a very small dose of gabapentin (100mg 2x a day) I don’t know if the pain is from healing incision or maybe the UTI or something else entirely, but the gabapentin has helped stay on top of it- I’ll probably start going down to once a day and see how she does her in the next few days. I think I’ll also have to steam clean all my carpets/floors this weekend!
So after all that drama things are going great- Ellie has her 2nd carboplatin treatment this upcoming Tuesday along with another PT appointment. She has started playing around and mostly has her endurance back though we really haven’t pushed that too hard yet, but with the weather getting nice I’m excited to get outdoors more
So there’s the update! I leave you with my nearly 100 pound dog in her “stroller”, my neighbors think I’m insane, haha! If you have a big dog I highly suggest looking into Burley Bark Ranger- it’s literally the biggest one I could find, and has been a dream to use- definitely not cheap, but its not made cheap either and if you can catch it on sale I think it’s worth it (I was able to get it 25% off)!
Tomorrow marks 1 month since Ellie’s surgery to amputate her front leg. It both feels like it happened yesterday and happened ages ago. This past week things have gone so good! It took Ellie a couple days to get back to normal after having to be sedated for a skin biopsy, but even with sedation and the carboplatin she had no vomiting or diarrhea which was a big sigh of relief for me. She was definitely tired, but we’ll have to see if that was due to the sedation or the carboplatin. Next time she goes in for carboplatin it’s just that no sedation so we’ll see then.
After she recouped from that she’s been an all star! As of yesterday she is off of all pain meds. This past week I did a day of 200mg x3, then a couple days 200mg x2, couple days of 100mg in morning 200 mg at night, then 100-200mg once a day, and now none! Highly suggest asking for 100mg capsules it’s so nice having the freedom to really taper them off. I know I have read on here that some vets cut them off at 8 days/14 days etc. Maybe there are scenarios where that is needed per other conditions or issues with your dog, but for reference Ellie was on carprofen/gabapentin for 2 weeks before her surgery and 10 days after, they did do a hard cut off on the carprofen, but I was given liberty with the gabapentin to give as needed, she really needed a full dose (300-400mg x3) till 3 weeks after the surgery and then slowly weaned off over this past week. My vet was so easy about it and gave me 120- 100mg gabapentin capsules refill… so they were not at all worried about her having it for a longer time. Just wanted to share, in case you also feel your puppers needs some extra, it really is the worse to see your dog in obvious pain….it’s already hard enough as is in my opinion!
I’m sure it’s a combination of both, but between Ellie being on less gabapentin which causes a sedation effect, and just feeling better in general she has become more and more like her old self. My favorite is her starting to wake me up again by coming up to the bed and laying her head on my bed and doing her impatient huffing (it’s not a bark… I can only describe it as adorable breathing?? haha) It’s impossible to not smile at this, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it till she did it! I mean c’mon…. look at that face!
In addition she hung out with us outside all weekend while we were doing different chores like she used to. She would go lay down when she needed a break, but she kept checking in and being a good supervisor to make sure we were being productive… but also was totally game if we needed a break to play, haha.
We are still working on endurance- we are probably up to .5 miles a day walks. With the weather getting so nice I might start doing our usual 1.5-2 mile walk and just bring the trailer to load her up as needed, or jump on my e-bike and bike around to other shorter walks. We have a really pretty bike path that follows the river that goes through town, that might be a great stretch.
The only negative I have at this time, is I do think she is still having either phantom pain or maybe some incision tenderness. maybe once a day or every other day she will be laying down and let out a small yelp and jump up looking around at what got her. I do think the warm compress helps alleviate that (maybe- I don’t have definitive proof), and I haven’t been great about doing that the last couple days so I’ll stay more strict on it. I have our next PT appointment this Thursday to ask them about it. I know the therapist told me about massaging the incision, because that scar tissue can pinch/irritate nerves, she didn’t want me to do it just yet since that was right when Ellie got her sutures out, but as the incision healed to start. I have a little bit, but am unsure how much/how hard to go at this point. I look forward to chatting about this with them… and maybe getting some new exercises! Ellie has become a master of her current ones!
As you can see above Ellie is the perfect patient, and I think she really enjoys the warm compress. thanks to your guys input my massage and stretching technique has gotten a lot better and she doesn’t mind it one bit anymore. I can’t tell if I’ve improved anything there, but I’m confident I haven’t hurt anything…that’s another thing I’m looking forward to come Thursday!
That’s all I have for now! Cheers to an all positive (well 98% positive) post!