Just a quick update on Emily. She's doing really, really well. Great appetite, tired but playful and cheery. Last week at the vets she was the real Em, all over the place, interested in everything, the vet tech (who is also named Emily!) had to chase her around the vet office to get the IV out of her. She tires quickly but when she's going she really gives 'er!
Currently she snuggled up in my lap while her beef cooks for her meals. We're 2 days late getting her chemo this week due to a late delivery of the drug to the vets. It's the nasty Doxirubicin. I've got her as well fortified as I possibly can. She's eating the cooked ND diet sprinkled on her meals which are full of protein in the form of meat and yogurt, as well as eggs with a little garlic, turmeric, cabbage, broccoli, spinach, peppers (veggies well cooked so the canine gut can digest it!) and supplements of FortiFlora (a vet product that has the optimal probiotics for dogs), arginine, glutamine, gloucosamine, digestive enzyme and her daily multivitamin. I'm making sure she get 2 - 4 ounces of organ meat a day. It's full of iron and other nutrients that are good for blood development. Her white blood cell count was a little low last time. I also make sure she gets some of her cabbage juice to help fortify the gut. She's also getting some pumpkin, just a tablespoon, once a day to help keep her bowels functioning well. After she is well over any side effects from the Duxirubicin I'll put the pumpkin on hold as it's high in sugars/carbs. It's a bit of an experiment at this point... I'll do an update of her diet as a blog post in the near future.
Emily's eating has changed as she's gone through treatment. One thing I do is keep everything separate and labeled with the date cooked. That way if she's off one thing I'm not worried about wasting a whole pile of food or giving it to Ollie who doesn't need it. If she's off something I can freeze it to keep it until she is back to her full appetite.
Things have gotten so much easier. Thank goodness!
Feeling secure that I've made the right choice for Ms Em,
CJ, Emily and Ollie
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
Why We Do What We Do.
No one has asked me why I've chosen to treat Emily's cancer. Well at least no one has been brave (or stupid) enough to ask me to my face... Here is why I've chosen to fight Emily's cancer.
This is the pure joy that has been part of Emily's life for as long as I can remember. She destroyed one other duck when she was a pup but she's had this one ever since. How may dogs have a 9+ year old toy!?
Here is another reason why I've made this choice for Emily.
For those of you who don't know I lost my last 2 dogs to cancer. In both cases it was hemangiosarcoma which has a poor prognosis even if caught early. I lost Willie in a matter of days and Dakota in a matter of hours. Dakota left us exactly 10 weeks before I noticed the lumps in Emily's neck. I didn't have a choice to even consider treatment. God wanted them home. (You'll notice in Emily's video that there is a white urn on the bookcase behind her, that's Willie. Dakota's dark wooden urn is next to her.)
I've had a wonderful furry face in my life since I was 9 years old. There were a couple of years I was dogless and when I look back they were probably the most difficult years of my life. Dogs just make life better. No matter how bad your day has been, no matter how you feel or what's going on, having a dog to come home to, to have that unconditional love is such a gift. My life is just more full because of the wonderful creatures who've shared it with me. And who continue to share it with me.
Emily is ready to go for her treatment tomorrow. I really do think all the challenges she's faced have been related to that massive GI bleed she suffered the week before her first chemo treatment due to the introduction of Prednisone and an Antibiotic together. Her system was compromised and never fully recovered before we started the assault with the chemo. She could end up with chronic Irritable Bowel Syndrome until this is all over. We'll watch and treat it as necessary. Right now she's having a nap after enjoying her pork/liver/cabbage/Hill's ND diet for breakfast number 2.
Gearing up for tomorrow's treatment,
CJ, Emily and Ollie
This is the pure joy that has been part of Emily's life for as long as I can remember. She destroyed one other duck when she was a pup but she's had this one ever since. How may dogs have a 9+ year old toy!?
Here is another reason why I've made this choice for Emily.
For those of you who don't know I lost my last 2 dogs to cancer. In both cases it was hemangiosarcoma which has a poor prognosis even if caught early. I lost Willie in a matter of days and Dakota in a matter of hours. Dakota left us exactly 10 weeks before I noticed the lumps in Emily's neck. I didn't have a choice to even consider treatment. God wanted them home. (You'll notice in Emily's video that there is a white urn on the bookcase behind her, that's Willie. Dakota's dark wooden urn is next to her.)
I've had a wonderful furry face in my life since I was 9 years old. There were a couple of years I was dogless and when I look back they were probably the most difficult years of my life. Dogs just make life better. No matter how bad your day has been, no matter how you feel or what's going on, having a dog to come home to, to have that unconditional love is such a gift. My life is just more full because of the wonderful creatures who've shared it with me. And who continue to share it with me.
Emily is ready to go for her treatment tomorrow. I really do think all the challenges she's faced have been related to that massive GI bleed she suffered the week before her first chemo treatment due to the introduction of Prednisone and an Antibiotic together. Her system was compromised and never fully recovered before we started the assault with the chemo. She could end up with chronic Irritable Bowel Syndrome until this is all over. We'll watch and treat it as necessary. Right now she's having a nap after enjoying her pork/liver/cabbage/Hill's ND diet for breakfast number 2.
Gearing up for tomorrow's treatment,
CJ, Emily and Ollie
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Oops. Sorry. It's all my fault.
Well I screwed up royally this past weekend. I had taken out some chicken thighs to de-skin and boil for Emily. Things defrost super slowly in my fridge so I had left them out on the counter. By the time I went to cook them the skins where almost room temperature to my touch. The thighs themselves where still a bit frozen inside. I took the skins off and had to keep sticking my hands under warm water just to get the skins off all the thighs. I was taking the skins off so that when I cooked the thighs they would be a little leaner for Ms. Em.
However........ I have always given the dogs fat and skin bits when I've been breaking up big pack, big pieces, deskinning or deboning meat. So I put the skin aside to put in Ollie's meals. He sees what Emily is getting and his plain old kibble just won't do. I have to add a little something to make it more interesting. Luckily it only takes a little tidbit of something yummy or a bit of meat juice and he thinks he's got a feast!
So I had this leftover chicken skin and Emily wasn't eating any veggies since her last chemo session on Tues (already know where I'm going with this??) so I thought, "hey, how about I mix some of this raw chicken skin with some veggies and maybe she'll eat it". Guess what? She picked out the chicken skin and left the veggies behind. (and you know she was thinking - "I'll show that crazy bitch!" cause she's a bouvier and I'm pretty sure that's what they think all the time anyway.)
So that was Saturday. Sunday she has some runny poo. I gave her some Kaopectate which is liquid and a nightmare to give. More ends up on Emily, the floor and the walls then actually gets down her throat. And then we had more runny poo. Notice how I'm calling it runny poo and not diarrhea? Yup, denial. It ain't just a river in Egypt.
She ate fine and everything else was good, including her mood. Monday morning I got up and Ollie had the runs too. Kaopectate for everyone! He had one more bout and he was done. Emily got worse. Still in denial. I should have called the vets by this point but I half assumed they were closed for Easter Monday. Monday night she went downhill fast, needing to go outside about every half hour, unsteady in her hind end, trying to lay out in the cold, damp yard. It was amazing to see how easily Ollie's healthy system could handle the bacteria versus Emily's immuno suppressed cancer system trying to handle the same thing. This is why we cook Emily's food or she gets fish directly from the freezer. The one exception is her chicken wings which go right from the freezer to the fridge to defrost, only a couple at a time and she's limited to 2 per day. So far they haven't cause her any problems and I had been watching that for the first couple of weeks.
We went to the vets Tuesday for Emily's week 7 treatment and agreed with the vet that it was not wise to overload Emily's system that was already dealing with diarrhea by subjecting her to chemo. So due to my stupidity Emily has to wait a week for her next treatment.
Moral of the story is Cancer dogs are immunosuppressed. All the precautions I've read about are worth taking. Period.
Luckily one dose of the Metron and she's doing great. So we caught it soon enough that her system hasn't been totally taxed.
Trying not to add to the dog's suffering,
CJ, Emily and Ollie
However........ I have always given the dogs fat and skin bits when I've been breaking up big pack, big pieces, deskinning or deboning meat. So I put the skin aside to put in Ollie's meals. He sees what Emily is getting and his plain old kibble just won't do. I have to add a little something to make it more interesting. Luckily it only takes a little tidbit of something yummy or a bit of meat juice and he thinks he's got a feast!
So I had this leftover chicken skin and Emily wasn't eating any veggies since her last chemo session on Tues (already know where I'm going with this??) so I thought, "hey, how about I mix some of this raw chicken skin with some veggies and maybe she'll eat it". Guess what? She picked out the chicken skin and left the veggies behind. (and you know she was thinking - "I'll show that crazy bitch!" cause she's a bouvier and I'm pretty sure that's what they think all the time anyway.)
So that was Saturday. Sunday she has some runny poo. I gave her some Kaopectate which is liquid and a nightmare to give. More ends up on Emily, the floor and the walls then actually gets down her throat. And then we had more runny poo. Notice how I'm calling it runny poo and not diarrhea? Yup, denial. It ain't just a river in Egypt.
She ate fine and everything else was good, including her mood. Monday morning I got up and Ollie had the runs too. Kaopectate for everyone! He had one more bout and he was done. Emily got worse. Still in denial. I should have called the vets by this point but I half assumed they were closed for Easter Monday. Monday night she went downhill fast, needing to go outside about every half hour, unsteady in her hind end, trying to lay out in the cold, damp yard. It was amazing to see how easily Ollie's healthy system could handle the bacteria versus Emily's immuno suppressed cancer system trying to handle the same thing. This is why we cook Emily's food or she gets fish directly from the freezer. The one exception is her chicken wings which go right from the freezer to the fridge to defrost, only a couple at a time and she's limited to 2 per day. So far they haven't cause her any problems and I had been watching that for the first couple of weeks.
We went to the vets Tuesday for Emily's week 7 treatment and agreed with the vet that it was not wise to overload Emily's system that was already dealing with diarrhea by subjecting her to chemo. So due to my stupidity Emily has to wait a week for her next treatment.
Moral of the story is Cancer dogs are immunosuppressed. All the precautions I've read about are worth taking. Period.
Luckily one dose of the Metron and she's doing great. So we caught it soon enough that her system hasn't been totally taxed.
Trying not to add to the dog's suffering,
CJ, Emily and Ollie
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