bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2006-09-28 08:44 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2006-09-28 08:44 pm
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Brandy update
As you may have read in an earlier post of mine, our Cairn Terrier, Brandy, has been diagnosed with a malignant bone tumor in her left shoulder area. Yesterday, after a series of increasingly intrusive tests, we finally found out the exact type of tumor involved, an osteosarcoma.
In a younger dog this would be treated aggressively with an amputation of the leg and chemotherapy. At her age (she's just turned 15) it's thought that amputation is not worth putting her through, as she'd be much slower to heal and it may take most of the time she has left. Chemotherapy without amputation is not recommended because it would inevitably prove futile.
Another option is palliative radiation therapy, but the location we'd have to take her to for the treatments is difficult to get to from where we live at the usual hour (in the middle of rush hour) and they aren't inexpensive.
The saving grace is this particular tumor, which doesn't often occur in small dogs anyway, is also atypical in that it has been progressing very slowly. I'm beginning to think she might have a good four to six months left when originally we thought she'd be lucky to get two.
She's on pain medication, of course, which still keeps her reasonably happy and, to be quite honest, she's really more active than she should be (she could break the affected bone at any time and such a fracture might prove fatal). We now have to carry her up and down stairs, but she insists on jumping onto the furniture and I reckon that trying to stop her is an exercise in futility, short of keeping her in her cage -- quite possibly for the rest of her life, given that that bone isn't likely to get any stronger. I think we all agree that's no way to assure her quality of life in whatever time she has left.
More as it happens.
In a younger dog this would be treated aggressively with an amputation of the leg and chemotherapy. At her age (she's just turned 15) it's thought that amputation is not worth putting her through, as she'd be much slower to heal and it may take most of the time she has left. Chemotherapy without amputation is not recommended because it would inevitably prove futile.
Another option is palliative radiation therapy, but the location we'd have to take her to for the treatments is difficult to get to from where we live at the usual hour (in the middle of rush hour) and they aren't inexpensive.
The saving grace is this particular tumor, which doesn't often occur in small dogs anyway, is also atypical in that it has been progressing very slowly. I'm beginning to think she might have a good four to six months left when originally we thought she'd be lucky to get two.
She's on pain medication, of course, which still keeps her reasonably happy and, to be quite honest, she's really more active than she should be (she could break the affected bone at any time and such a fracture might prove fatal). We now have to carry her up and down stairs, but she insists on jumping onto the furniture and I reckon that trying to stop her is an exercise in futility, short of keeping her in her cage -- quite possibly for the rest of her life, given that that bone isn't likely to get any stronger. I think we all agree that's no way to assure her quality of life in whatever time she has left.
More as it happens.