The Journey of Ellie the Great Pyrenees Mix – Page 3 – navigating life after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma

1st Carboplatin Appointment

Yesterday, April 12th, Ellie had her first dose of Carboplatin. It was a big day as she also had to go in for the clinical trial side of things for an 8-hour serial blood draw and a skin biopsy to measure the effects of the Vismodegib. Thankfully this is the last one for 6 weeks.

The vet informed me that she is a total lightweight when it comes to sedation (I 100% agree after the trazadone incident) and that she will probably feel loopy for up to 24 hours.

Poor thing was so so so drunk! when we got home she wanted nothing to do with any food, wanted nothing to do with me, wanted nothing to do with the world… she was over it… but did take a few laps of chicken broth so I called that a amazing success. I was informed she didn’t go potty all day, and she wouldn’t for me either so I got some towels under her backend while she snoozed since this is exactly how she was when she came back from her surgery the first time. It’s amazing how quick we adjust to our new normal, since I had been through this before I wasn’t anxious or worried and I had an internal timeline of how long things usually took for her.

Later in the evening she perked up a little bit. We went out a few times and she really wanted to poop, but not much was coming out- what did come was awfully loose. At 11PM I went ahead and gave her 80mg of Cerenia in case she did indeed have diarrhea and/or to help her appetite, she ate up a little bit of chicken and rice and we went to bed.

This morning she is still tired, but she ate her normal kibble w/water, and went outside to pee, so all good things. I was so relieved to see her appetite back, I wasn’t surprised that it was gone after the sedation, but I was worried if the carboplatin would make her not feel great. I’m cautiously optimistic.

In preparation for her maybe not having a great appetite I made a whole chicken and some rice to offer as a replacement. Whenever I make a chicken I also make a bunch of broth in my pressure cooker. Since I make it in the pressure cooker once the broth is done all the bones crumble under a little bit of pressure (versus splintering), so for years I’ve saved all the leftovers from the broth (sans onions and garlic) and would make dog treats. I used to just stuff kongs with it and then freeze them, but now with the pupsicle I can make perfect little molds of them. one chicken makes around 20 of these treats to feed whenever.

I know it’s not the most appetizing, but Ellie sure loves them! These treats have been so helpful for when I need Ellie to be still or a little distracted so I can to cold and hot heat compresses, stretches, massages (usually she just falls asleep to the massages, haha).

That’s about all I got for now, it’s been blissfully boring 🙂

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Bit of a Rollercoaster Week

Ellie had her first physical therapy appointment this past Tuesday. Oncology had a peek at her and removed her sutures. YAY!

In her PT they did TENS (Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) cervical paraspinals around her neck, as well as PEMF (Pulsed electromagnetic field) therapy. This combined with massage is a nice little spa day for Ellie which is very much appreciated as she’s building up all these new muscles. They also worked with her on some new stretches and exercises that I’ve been sent home with.

I had a really nice chat with Ellie’s oncologist on the upcoming chemotherapy and she also got the test results back on the tumor and it was confirmed osteosarcoma. This was oddly a punch in the gut. Obviously I was planning on it, and I thought I was prepared, but I guess it was the last of my diehard silver lining hopes getting obliterated that it was a lesser cancer or something completely different where even if she had to go through chemotherapy her projected lifespan would be measured in years instead of months. I try not to think about that, but it hit home again.

Since Tuesday it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster- I started tapering off the Ellie’s Gabapentin, from 300mg 3x a day to 300 mg 2x a day and then stopping. It’s not going great there- she was obviously uncomfortable the first evening that she didn’t have any so I gave her 300mg, and again later this morning she was uncomfortable with me around her incision as I was doing warm compress and actually whimpered when she was standing afterward, not sure what that was at whether it be the incision, neck pain, hip pain, leg pain? It doesn’t help that she also itched and nibbled at the lower part of her incision, no bleeding or broken skin it just looks like a new bruise at the bottom, and was obviously tender, so I went ahead and popped on the ole t-shirt again and gave her 300mg gabapentin. I’m really hoping that’s the issue.

you can see the redness (and this was before she got at it again making it worse)…that is if you can get past the cuteness overload :p

My brain won’t let me stop at that though, as I’m struggling with the exercises/massages I was sent home to do. She’s an absolute star at her neck side bends and balancing on uneven ground. But she pretty much refuses to army crawl, and seems really really uncomfortable when I work on her back end. We are supposed to be doing hip stretches and finger rolls twice a day. Her face gets tight, and she pulls her leg back in on the stretches, and looks away or moves her body away a little while doing the finger rolls. It freaks me out, because I’m not a physical therapist, I don’t think I was stretching too far, but maybe I am going way too far? Or is it a hurt so good situation? same with the finger rolls- anyone who uses a foam roller knows how painful breaking up the myofascial can be, but man does it feel better when you are through… with that said I’m worried I went too hard there too and maybe now she’s bruised on her back from my grubby fingers. Bleh! It’s really unfair that dogs can sniff out LITERAL CANCER, but not tell us dumb dumbs if we have gone too far.

This is mostly just a vent, and to be transparent with where my head is at with all of this. I have an email to the PT to get some clarification and hoping they might be able to give me some hands on advice when Ellie goes in Tuesday for her first chemotherapy (cheers to going to a university where all the things are in one place!). Oh yeah- no wonder I’m emotionally exhausted, just when you start to get over the anxiety of the amputation (and that’s only if things have all gone right), you get to prepare yourself for the chemotherapy and have another bout of monitoring to see how she’s handling it. I know it’s usually fine, but I refuse to not be prepared for as many outcomes as possible.

Wow this is a downer of a blog post isn’t it? It hasn’t been all bad, actually very little of it is has been bad. Case in point, I had to order something on amazon and since I was there I couldn’t help myself and got Ellie a life vest. How freaking cute is she?!? She was a good swimmer before all this, so I’m really excited to take her to the lake this summer and still enjoy the water 🙂 🙂 😀

She has been getting better and better at her balance, getting up and down, and her endurance. We are still at very short walks- probably going about a block round trip, but it’s definitely progress. We’ve also started learning some new tricks to keep the brain engaged! The current one is “Touch” she got to touch my hand really quick, and we are starting to work on her ringing a bell 😀 . Lastly she has easily figured out how to get her chew on- which is good because I went a little crazy and got an assortment of collagen sticks (I guess they are a longer lasting version of a bully stick), cow tails, a pig femur, and cow hooves! That combined with her Yak bars she going to be downright spoiled, and I’m here for it!!

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12 days post op

The past few days have been delightfully boring. We got the go ahead from our vet to start decreasing Ellie’s pain medication so we have stopped the Carprofen since Friday (but I have a few extra to give if needed) and lowered her Gabapentin from 400mg 3X/day to 300mg 3x/day. I did drop her down to 2x a day, but Ellie isn’t quite ready for that, so we will keep her at 3x a day through the weekend and then reevaluate. Her incision is looking so good- I have been taking pictures of it daily and I think I will have to make a animation with all of them stitched together to see the change, haha. the bruising that she had on her belly has completely cleared up, she does have fluid underneath the skin, but it’s not a seroma. The vet said that’s probably due in part to the heat therapy, but that it will clear up as she continues to heal… which is being aided by the heat therapy so if it’s not inflamed or sensitive to the touch keep going the course. Ellie is so big that I have to do the heating pad in 2 parts. So for the lower section I give her a pupsicle, which usually gets us through the first 10 minutes, and then I have her lay back and I move it to the top section. She can’t really have a treat in this position so it has become our time to have scratch/massage sessions. It’s been very bonding, and I’m super grateful she’s so patient about it and has come to enjoy it, often times she just falls asleep.

heat therapy and itches time!

I’ve been trying to get her out of the house at least every other day for a mini outing to keep her spirits up (and when the weather allows it’s supposed to snow…again…on Monday :(). She is usually pretty tuckered out by the time we even get to the end of my driveway, so it’s either going for a car ride, or breaking out the burley!

biggest dog trailer I could find…still not quite big enough 😀

I got this Burley Dog Trailer last year when I bought myself an electric bike. It’s literally the biggest trailer I could find, and one of the few that’s rated for dogs Ellie’s weight, but it’s still not quite big enough for her size. As you can see I have to have the front ‘window’ up for her to sit comfortably, and it’s not really long enough for her to lay down unless she curls up- So I’m not going to be doing any long road trips in it, but it’s fantastic on the bike, very easy to push/pull regardless of it’s in stroller mode or bike trailer mode, and really well made. I’m really glad I already had it before this endeavor for a few reasons.

1. It was not cheap- I don’t think there’s anyway I could justify the price after all the vet bills.

2. Ellie was already comfortable getting into it with 4 legs, so getting into it with 3 was really no biggie.

I think the longest road on this recovery is going to be Ellie getting her endurance back. Having the trailer will allow us to really let her go at her own pace without missing out on activities just because she can’t quite keep up just yet.

Yesterday we went on a little walk and got to see our favorite neighbors- it was definitely a highlight for Ellie! But it was a lot too- even though she road in the trailer for about 75% of the 3-4 blocks she slept pretty much the rest of the afternoon. So I’ll just have to be wary of that. I’m really excited to have PT coming up, so I can learn more about how to walk that fine line of getting enough exercise to improve without getting hurt.

Another random task that I’ve been doing since Ellie’s surgery was sneaking water into her whenever possible. I saw all the warnings about making sure your dog was getting enough fluids, but I only recently found out just how much they need. I have been putting water into Ellie’s food for a long while (I don’t soak it, just put it one right before I give it to her so it’s still crunchy) and I thought that was sufficient, but I recently listened to a podcast about dogs quality of life and the vet stated that dogs need a minimum of 10cc per lb of weight, so Ellie at 97 pounds needs nearly 4 cups of water a day. I measured and figured out I was giving a cup per meal, so 2 cups a day. I tried adding 2 cups per meal, but it’s way too much at once so I started staggering it so she gets a cup of water at her morning meal, then a cup of water with just a touch of chicken broth a couple of times throughout the day and then a cup in her evening meal. Just trying to be proactive about it- if she did get dehydrated it would be a lot harder to get her to take it if she’s already not feeling good. I don’t really notice any difference, but it definitely can’t hurt!

With that I want to say thank you to everyone who is keeping up with Ellie’s recovery and all your kind words! I will continue to share our journey as we find our new normal 🙂

play hard, sleep hard 😀 not quite awake from the epic nap.

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We broke the rules…

I want to start this off with saying every single person I’ve spoken to at CSU have been absolutely glorious and I trust them 100% to treat Ellie with compassion and competence. With that said, Ellie was SO ready to go home when I picked her up yesterday. Everything went smooth, and she even made friends with another dog in the trial named Sitka. I was told they curled up together to nap (D’awww). So I have a feeling she was just super overstimulated from being in an active office for 8 hours. At home it’s just me, her, and the cat with a couple people dropping by every few days- super quiet, like super-duper quiet. I wasn’t surprised when we got home she absolutely passed out and wasn’t up for much the rest of the evening. This morning, though, she was still pretty worn out and just seemed a little down. I was worried the new drug (vismodegib, which I have to give to her daily now) might be causing some issues or maybe yesterday she over did it and was really sore or maybe this or maybe that… on and on the way a worry spiral goes.

She didn’t seem to be in pain, she just seemed down so I decided to break the rules and take her to the park to see if maybe she was just depressed/bored and needed a pick-me-up. I loaded her into the car and we took off, she laid down pretty quick, and to my dismay even put her head down and seemed to have no interest in looking out the window. I started to think that maybe this wasn’t the best idea, she must really not be feeling well. But then, we coincidently passed the street where I would usually turn to head to the vets office, and I kid you not a block later her head perked up, and she ended up sitting up and looking around taking in lots of sniffs. I’m pretty sure the poor thing thought she was headed back to the vet! We got to the park, and even though it was technically against the rules we really only walked maaaaybe 75 feet total? Just enough to get to a nice fork in the trail where we hung out for a bit to smell everything and to watch people and other dogs go by. I won’t lie, I was tempted to go farther, because she definitely wanted to go, but common sense persevered- we will get there Ell-Bell, I promise.

It did the trick though, we headed home and she had her head out the window the whole time and just seemed perkier. She’s napping as I type this, no more of that staring into the great abyss eyes. Now is it possible I’m just projecting onto my dog and convincing myself she’s happier? Maybe… but at this point, I’ll take it and I would break the rules again without hesitation.

1st Oncology Visit

It’s been a couple days since Ellie rejoined the pooper club, and it’s gone pretty dang smooth… Except for it freaking snowing every other day (Spring pleeease hurry up).

woke up to 5 inches of fresh snow. I’m over it.

We have our routine worked out, and there have been no accidents since. She has also started laying on the carpet again (but still says no to her fancy bed). She’s moving around fantastic, but definitely tires out pretty quick. She will need to stay pretty mellow for the next week, but after that we will start going on short walks, and slowly increasing the duration (vet said to start with 5-10 minutes, then add ~5 minutes a day, but watch carefully and pull back if she shows any signs of being uncomfortable that night or next day). Since she’s bound to get a little cabin fever over this next week I’ve made sure to have a selection of mental stimulation toys on the ready. I’ve already shown ya’ll the woof pupsicle, but I also made a snuffle mat for her to search for bits of her daily meal. I made it out of one of the sides of those metal cubes that use to be all the rage because you could arrange them however you wanted? along with some scrap fleece and t-shirts. I think I’ll have to make a few more, she loves the current one, but it only takes about 5 minutes to find all the goodies. Any other ideas for mental stimulation? I’ve hidden food around the house/wrapped it in a towel for her to find, but always looking for more ideas!

Ellie’s Snuffle Mat!

Yesterday we went for a little car ride, because I wanted to test if I would need help getting her into my SUV for the appointment we had today. I got this ridiculously long (7.25 feet!) ramp. Glad I did, because it’s still a decent incline, but Ellie (with my guiding/supporting in the harness) gets in semi-easily. It really shines when she gets out, I’m able to support with a harness so no heavy bounces down. Anyway, so since I already had her loaded up we went for a drive. She tried to stand for a little bit, but thankfully laid down and enjoyed the views comfortably.

Today is exactly a week since Ellie’s amputation and she is currently at CSU for the first step in the clinical trial she is in. They are giving her the study drug called Vismodegib orally and then doing an 8 hour serial blood collection to evaluate the safety and molecular effects of the drug. Vismodegib is currently used to treat humans with basal cell carcinoma that has spread to other parts of the body. From the study: “It appears that canine and human osteosarcoma, like human basal cell carcinoma, rely on a cell signaling pathway called the Hedgehog pathway (which is inhibited by vismodegib) for cell growth, survival and spread, treatment with vismodegib results in delayed osteosarcoma spread.”. In 2 weeks she will start the traditional chemotherapy Carboplatin, while also taking vismodegib daily. This study is top heavy- we will be going in every week for the first 5 weeks to do blood work, most of these will be short 1 hour visits except for her carboplatin days which will be closer to 4 hours every 3 weeks. I do feel anxiety about putting her in more stressful situations than necessary, and fear that this drug will have adverse effects. With that said, I never want to say no to treatment based on financial costs. Full disclosure between the diagnostic testing, surgery, and hospital stay I am close to spending $6,000.00 already. For a dog Ellie’s size chemotherapy would be over $5,000.00. This clinical trial will allow me to go ahead and get a PT appointments for Ellie without having to crunch numbers as well as taking some well deserved time off for her and I to enjoy whatever time the world decides to give us. It also allows for money for future appointments as well. Even if everything goes swimmingly, Ellie will need x-rays multiple times a year to check for lung mets so being prepared for that is necessary. Another alternative reason I went with the clinical trial was it bumped me up the lists. When I originally called CSU for an oncology consult they were booked out almost a month, but when I did a consult for the trial, I was able to get in, in less than a week and her amputation a week after that. It also gets Ellie seen by some of the best veterinarians in the country. So yes I am anxious, but also very confident in my decision.