Another delay.

One thing that we noticed since Gaby's chemo treatments was her acute sense of obedience! A silver lining, if you will. She does about everything that you tell her. Well, not everything! She didn't listen to Jennifer when a stray cat goes running from under our deck into the woods. Gaby gave a good chase. Most of the time I don't even need to leash her to take her to the vet office if I don't want to. She jumps down from the car, trots over, and stands at the front door waiting to be let in.

(Here is a picture of Gambit and Gaby around 2002.)

She is getting used to the vet's office. She still shivers a little but she seems less reluctant to go through the back door into the exam rooms. I still have to get up and act like I'm walking back but I don't need to walk all the way back to the back. She gets it and just goes on.

We are now a week after the dox treatment and Gaby is due for her 7th week treatment, according to the protocol that we are following. The 7th treatment is a light week with a CBC and Visticrine. At home, we are giving her the Cytoxin every other day. One of these posts, I will post the entire 12 week protocol that we are following as I just realized that I never have done that.

Well, Gaby's white blood cell count is down today and we postponed her next treatment by a week. This is about our 3rd delay due to one thing or another. It will give her a chance to rest.

Dox day is over.

Gaby is doing really well after her first treatment on the dox drug. After last week's test came back with some concerns, we postponed her dox treatment until yesterday. Dox has a cumulative affect on a dog's heart once given that really won't heal back up. The next dose will further weaken her heart. However, a lot of dogs will go into remission for years when on this particular protocol so we are very optimistic.

Especially since Gaby is doing so well. She spent all day from 8am to 5pm at Dr. B's office. When I went to pick her up she was very happy to see me and she came right over and wanted immediate petting.

The techs and everyone there at our new vets are special people. They gave Gaby a purple heart for making it through 1/2 way.

Here is a pic:

One week reprieve..

By the way, I'm caught up with my backlog of blog entries so I am up to real time updating now. This is the 7th week of Gaby's chemo, I believe... it's either the 7th or the 8th week. I'm kinda off since Gaby had a week off earlier in her treatments also.

This past week was supposed to be her first dox dose. Our vet does a great job of making sure everything is in order before doing any treatments. Unfortunately, sometimes this means more $$$ for tests or meds or time. This past week was time.

Gaby went in last Tuesday, April 15th 2008 for a long day of dox. The reason was that there were some variables on her liver function when we had her tested. We wanted to make sure her liver was doing it's job once her food was injested. She went into the vet on a 24 hour fast and once they did the test, they fed her and then did the liver test.

We wanted to stay on our Tuesday schedule so we waited another week. In addition, our vet is a part time doctor so we wanted to work on Tuesday so that our vet was doing all of the treatments. So, this Tuesday is our new first dox date.

Another thing is that we finally got our Cytoxin tabs from Canada. It took about 14 days for the pills to get here so that was not too bad.

When we take Gaby into the vet office, she gets so shaky! The nerves gets to her so badly that I feel bad for her. When the tech comes to get her, Gaby goes straight for the out door. She trusts me so I have to walk her and the tech back to the backroom. Gaby puts her head pasted right to your leg.

The 'easy' weeks for Gaby.

March 18 - April 8, 2008.

This is as easy as it gets in the chemotherapy world! Gaby went through an easy regiment for 3 weeks after a 2 week cycle of Vistincrine and Elspar. For those 3 weeks, Gaby just received Vistincrine and no Elspar.

Another thing that we found made it very easy on Gaby was that the vet allowed us to bring her in the morning to get her blood and then take her back home until it was time for the Vist. The first 2 weeks when Gaby got home, she had been so worked up by staying at the vets all day that she was so thirsty! She must have just stressed herself up so much that she panted heavily all day. You see, Gaby is not very socialized. We have a fenced in yard that she has lived in her entire life. She loved her brother Gambit but never got a chance to go out and get used to outsiders and other dogs.

My wife in the mean time has done some research on the Internet on this subject and decided to give Gaby additional supplements to help her body with the treatments. The vet really didn’t mention any supplements but I believe they will do her a great deal of good.

Arginine (1000 MG / day)– amino acid that helps with metabolic stabilization.
Fish oil (4000mg / per day) Recommended 1000MG per every 20lbs of dog) – omega 3
Glutamine (1500 mg / day)– got this in powder form. The clerk had recommended the powder over liquid to save a little money.

We also got her Iams Puppy Chow because it was highest in protein and lowest in carbs. The reason is that is used sorghum fillers instead of wheat.

She has shown a little weight loss which is concerning. Day 11, Thursday evening she started to show loss of appetite for the first time. The next morning she was very reluctant to eat and had to be hand fed. Ate the rest because we put egg on her food. 15 minutes after she ate she vomited. Jennifer went to the vet that afternoon to get extra medication for Gaby’s naseua. Later Dr Bowden sent an email saying that she feared that we were in for a rough weekend! We also discontinued the prednisone on the recommendation of the vet until Monday because her tummy needed a rest. I remember that when Gambit was taking pred for his cancer that he also took tummy meds to help him out.

Metoclopramide 10MG – sub q injection : for naseau
1 hour later – Sucralfate 1MG – dissolved in water orally: GI protectant
Mitazapine 30MG :
30 minutes later: Pepcid 10MG for acid


1 hour after injection she showed signs of improvement but she was reluctant to take oral medication. Coaxed them down anyway. 1 hour and ½ later her appetite returned and fed on her own.

The next morning she needed some coaxing for her food so we added some egg and she ate the entire thing with no problem.

Continued to eat with egg and continued GUI protectant and Pepcid for a week.

By the second easy week Gaby was eating without much help (Benefuls or Chicken stock helpers in her food). She seems to feel great. The prednisone has turned her into a begging mess however. She acts just like Gambit did on his pred.... everytime I get up to go into the kitchen, Gaby gets up and follows me. I guess I must snack too much! Gambit did the same thing and now I know that the pred must be making her crazy.

The only thing that has changed on the drugs is that we found Cytoxan pills online at a Canadian pharmacy. This is a pill that is supposed to be given with the protocol that we are using but they are on backorder in the US. We told our vet of our find and she checked the site out. She reported back that she was amazed at the price, nearly a 5-1 savings. She wrote us an Rx and we called the pharamacy. We bought 100 pills at 50MG for $90.

I was thinking that if we were going along ok without the pills, why would we all of a sudden start giving it to her? It was explained to me that this gives her a much better chance of staying in remission by giving her the pills. Why go thru all of this shit and then skimp out on these pills? Espcecially since we found them and they are so cheap compared with the rest of the $$.

We have one more week of easy before the big guns are brought out. For that, I am nervous.

About Gaby and the beginning of her treatment for Lymphoma

March 5, 2008

Gaby is a 10 year old Golden Retriever who has always been in generally good health prior to her chemotherapy treatments. Dr. Bowden our vet has a 12 week protocol for chemotherapy that involves Elspar, Vincristine, Cyclosphosamide and Doxorubicin.

Gaby got home on March 5, 2008 after her first visit to the vets to start her chemo treatment for lyphoma. She had the following drugs:

IV Cath
Benadryl Injection
Elspar 10,000 IU Vial
Vincristine 1MG

After getting home from her first treatments she used the bathroom normally, drank normally. She was dosed with 20MG of Prednisone the next morning. She seemed in a good mood and played with us in the yard. She went for walks outside. Her stool was normal and not running like some have reported. She seemed to have a good appetite.

The Elspar is one of the big gun drugs of chemotherapy. She gets one more dose and then gets just the Vincristine for 3 weeks until the Dox. We are worried about the dox because it is said to have a cumulative affect on the dog’s heart.

My wife did not agree but to me she just seemed different. Maybe it was my paranoia but the life behind her eyes are different. They don’t seem to have the same sparkle as even 2 weeks ago.

Gaby has turned to an old dog right in front of my eyes.

On to the vet.

"Visiting a new vet."

Jennifer and I had been taking our dogs to the same vet here in Raleigh for the past 10 years. For maintenance, they seemed to be pretty good and even the K9 officers take some of their dogs there. We just felt that this group of doctors did not take the time to get a good diagnosis.

For example, with our first dog Gambit. He started having these head-tilt episodes for a few months before we found out that he had a brain tumor. Our regular vet had seen him twice and kept insisting it was an ear infection. That made sense to us, he was always having dirty ears from laying in the dirt all day especially in the summers. Finally when we took Gambit to NC State the neurologist immediately told us that she thought Gambit had a brain tumor and it turned out that she was right!

Well, here we go again... we had just had Gaby into our regular vet for a checkup. Out of all of those 10 years, I don't think these vets gave our dogs a good, hands on exam. Both times when we found out that our dogs could possibly be cancerous, it was diagnosed by a hands-on exam!

If there is anything that I can convey, it is this.... if your regular vet does not perform good exams just rubbing all over your dogs body with just their hands, go directly to another vet.

It's that simple.

"When was the last time you saw your regular vet?"

My wife and I had taken our youngest golden retriever - Gaby - to have her knee evaluated at NC State's animal rehab clinic. Four years ago she was chasing rabbits in our yard and came limping back. Her ACL was ripped up! She recovered well from that surgery and really had no lasting effects other than a little muscle denegeration around her thigh and thicking on the knee cartilige.

We wanted to do what we could for her since she was only our second dog. You see our first, best and most wonderful of all dogs, Gambit, had just passed away in September 2007. (Leave future link to Gambit's blog.)We had motivation to make the best life for Gaby and was almost doing it for Gambit. We told Gambit when he died that we would take good care of his sister.

We sat down with the rehab doctor - Dr. Kevin Jones - for his first look at Gaby. He started out with the normal hands on exam going over her body starting from the head down. He had just put his hands on her when he asked us that question: "When was the last time you took her to your regular vet?". I immediately thought nothing of it. "Why?" we asked.... "You may want to take her as soon as possible." "She may have lymphoma."