dogboy, chemo week 9

Buzz did pretty well last week, after his second adriamycin on July 27, but he had to be coaxed to eat his dinner. I wasn't toooo worried -- he would eat any people food, and he would eat his chow out of my hand, but..... Failure to vacuum up dinner is very uncorgi and very unBuzz.

In an effort to see if I was being manipulated, I worked toward getting my hand out of the way (so he was eating right out of his dish).....

Either I was being manipulated, or he really didn't feel all the way ok until Friday, because on Friday last week he started eating with no prompting or urging or extra handling. A little of both, I expect.

It was a week after the first adria that he first felt all the way ok since we began this whole trip...........

Friday I took the boys around the block, and Buzz was out at the end of the leash, even though it was a warm day. The last walk we took, several weeks ago, he was dragging. Saturday he told me it would be good if I threw a toy for him in the family room.

Yay.

Our vet called yesterday morning. She told me that she'd woken up in the night and worried about Buzz for two hours. I was very sorry she'd been worried about him, but isn't that just how you want your vet to feel about your dog?

She said that dogs can go on for years with leukemia, and that it's great that he's doing so well. We scheduled him for vincristine on Wednesday this week.

Week 9 of chemo has some changes. He's down to half a pred every other day (from a whole one), and the cytoxan has been switched out for leukeran. Like cytoxan, it has to be given with gloves on, but I've seen no reports of bad leukeran side effects on caninecancer@yahoogroups.com, but have heard of several dogs who got the nasty hemorrhagic bladder cystitis cytoxan can cause. (Here's a couple of interesting factoids for you -- both cytoxan and leukeran are mustard gas derivatives! They work by disrupting dna replication....)


I'm surely enjoying having him feeling good! It's so much easier to imagine I'm actually doing him good by feeding him poison when he feels so much better than he did before we started treating him!