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April 8, 2006
This dog ain't no dummy
Given Maeve’s illness I’ve experienced an odyssey of finding foods that are cancer defeating yet temptingly yummy. For about two months she ate a (very expensive) high protein food. Then she started refusing it. So I went through several other options until I returned to her old high end (but not cancer defeating) dog kibble.
One of the symptoms of liver damage is poor appetite. Maeve never has a poor appetite, she’s always happy to eat my socks for example, even on a full stomach. But when you find out your dog is sick then the stakes become higher around food.
Last night we went to dog happy hour (dogs play, humans get happy) and then to our friend’s house for dinner. Maeve is usually a handful at these type of events since she can easily place her head on a dinner table and is happy to help herself to whatever is being served. And if the counter tops in the kitchen are just a little bit higher, why it’s just no problem to stand up and serve herself (this is called counter-surfing in the world of Rhodesian Ridgebacks). Maeve is a pro.
She had refused to eat her regular dog food before going to happy hour. After the dinner party we returned home and with some coaxing, finally ate her food. Revealing that her appetite is fine, she just would prefer the chicken, asparagus, potatoes, and salad that the humans were eating.
This morning she was presented with the usual dog food offerings. She turned her nose up at it. I always have a twinge of worry, is this it? Is she not feeling well and that’s why she won’t eat it? After two hours of her hounding me about my food and then sulking on the couch (her not me) I finally broke down and gave her one of the new dog cookies I bought yesterday. Of course, that is what she wanted.
My goal was to give her a cookie after she ate her food so that she would learn that eating her food would lead to the reward.
I put a few cookies in with her food. She ate the cookies and then ate her food.
She won.
And then went into the living room and did a little victory dance.
I kid you not.
Posted by maeve921 at 11:59 AM | TrackBack
April 7, 2006
Maeve the Dog Update
Had a big scare with Maeve the dog yesterday. She’s been holding her own ever since being diagnosed with lymphoma back in December, 2005. The last week or so she’s been refusing her usual food and acting a little down. Yesterday the first report from the vet was that her liver functioning was impaired suggesting that the lymphoma had spread to her liver.
She has t-cell lymphoma which does not have as good a prognosis as b-cell lymphoma (the more common type) but her immediate response to treatment was remission which usually predicts a better life expectancy (not a cure but at least buying a couple of more years).
But if the lymphoma was in her liver then it would mean that her remission was over. The formula is that the length of the first remission predicts that the length of the next remission will be half of the first remission. Any attempt at inducing remission again would only give her about another month or so.
I opted for the biopsy to determine what was going on. At the same time started preparing myself for the fact that this was it. I wasn’t inclined to put her through more chemo just to get another month. Even though I was very upset, I consoled myself with the thought that without chemo she would have died within a few weeks of diagnosis but chemo had given me a few more months.
You have to measure these things in terms of months when you’re dealing with cancer.
However, the biopsy did not reveal more lymphoma. The best guess is that one of the chemo drugs was toxic to her liver and caused damage. It could be another type of cancer but that seemed less likely. Damage to the liver is still a serious concern and could prove fatal as well. They put her on SAMe which is a holistic treatment which I thought was cool that they were open to that approach.
When I picked her up she was ready to leave, as she always is. She seemed her usual feisty self, even with the liver problems. When we got to the floor we live on she took the leash from me as she usually does and walked herself home.
Maeve has a history of surviving usually fatal events.
As a one year old she helped herself to another dog’s bottle of chewable sedatives. Her stomach was pumped but the pills were already digested. She was fine.
As a four year old, she ate a bottle of chewable pills for incontinence. 3000 mg to be exact. They didn’t expect her to make it through the night. She did. She had some complications and when we called the ASPCA Poison Control center to find out if the complications were typical, their response was that they didn’t have on record any dog surviving a 3000 mg overdose so they couldn’t tell us what would happen. She recovered. I was told to expect that there would be significant kidney damage from the overdose. There was not.
As we left the animal hospital last night, I turned to Maeve and said, “Guess you’re not going to go down without a fight are you?” Her response was to leap into the car to get back to the business of taking charge of her life.
Posted by maeve921 at 12:25 PM | TrackBack
Bush "Okayed" Leak According to Libby
Those comparisons to Nixon don’t seem so far off the mark anymore.
My feeling that the Administration is vindictive has been vindicated.