Tyler

It's a sad weekend around here. Got some bad news about Tyler. He has cancer. Well, here's the story and what's next.

You may recall that late last summer he was having problems swallowing, and was choking when he ate or drank water. One vet told me it was nothing serious, and to just raise his food and water dishes - which initially helped, so I thought he'd be fine. The problem returned around the same time his eye problem ramped up, but I was so much more focused on that, that I didn't pay much attention to the swallowing problem.

After he'd recovered from his eye surgery, I took him to another vet, which I'd actually planned several months before - a holistic vet in Beaver, PA, who I hoped to get better advice from for taking good care of him in these late years, making sure his home-cooked diet was up to par, etc.

Well, this moron took one look at Tyler's age and said there was nothing he could do for him. He told me his heart murmur was so bad that he'd probably be in heart failure by the end of the year, and he basically wrote him off.

I was sad, but didn't know what to do, so I took Tyler home and didn't initially do anything.

Because of what I learned after the fact is why I say the guy was a moron who ripped me off. He was wrong about there being nothing to do, and wrong about Tyler's heart murmur. But don't get me started on that asshole.

From October until the end of December, Tyler had more and more problems eating, and ate less and less, until he'd lost so much weight he was literally just skin and bones. I finally said, screw this "nothing can be done" - at this rate he's going to starve to death. So I took him to another local vet who many people I know speak very highly of.

So the new vet said "Well, we could certainly at least take an x-ray and see if we can see what's going on in there." I kind of kicked myself for not trying that sooner, rather than listening to that moron, holistic vet, but again ... I don't know, when a vet - a specialist that you pay a lot of money to go see tells you something, I guess it's understandable to believe it.

So anyway, the new vet took an x-ray and said she didn't see anything wrong. She suggested it might be some type of auto-immune problem, and said we could try a round of prednisone. I agreed - I'd try anything at that point. We also supplemented his food with some canned high-calorie prescription food to help him gain weight. I started feeding him 3 or 4 times a day. And his 'regular food,' I started chopping up real fine in a food processor and coating with melted butter - in part to make it easier to swallow, and in part to help him gain some weight.

I also started sitting on the floor with him, and holding his food bowl up in front of his face at a steep angle, so that he barely had to move his head from a 'normal' position to eat. This helped two ways - he choked a lot less with his bowl held like that, and I could encourage him to keep eating when he tried to stop. It worked really well, and he quickly began gaining weight. By the end of a couple weeks, I was able to go back to putting his food bowl in his feeder (raised, and propped at an angle on a blanket) and he'd eat on his own. His appetite was great then, and he'd eagerly eat 3 or 4 meals a day, with no problem. He also almost completely stopped choking at all, whether when he ate or drank water.

It was almost like he was cured, he was really on the mend, and I was relieved. I realized that was the best he'd been since last summer before his eye problem went all pear-shaped, and thought we'd finally made it out of the woods and got a break.

Tuesday when I came home from work he had a big swelling or lump under the left side of his jaw. Initially I didn't think much about it, just thought he had an infection or something. Took him back to the vet Wednesday, she was concerned, did a biopsy, and - it's cancer.

It's been an emotional weekend, but here's where I'm at for the moment (which is subject to change). I had several long talks with the vet about this. I told her I want to aggressively treat it to the point that it has any hope of serving any purpose ... but I don't want to subject Tyler to any treatment that's going to make him miserable and sick, to maybe effect no change at all, or something that will only last a couple weeks.

She was totally cool about it, very understanding. She completely supported my position (none of that "he's old, just forget about it" BS I've gotten from other vets). When I explained that I understand that when a dog's 16 years old, any talk of "long term prognosis" is kind of pointless, she put it this way. What's the life expectancy of a 16 year old dog with no major health problems? Maybe a year or so (average; of course some dogs live longer, but most don't make it to 16, so it was a bit of a generalization, but I get the point). What's the prognosis of a 16 year old dog with cancer who undergoes viable treatment? Maybe a year. But without treatment? Far, far less.

So it seemed reasonable to me - and the vet agreed - to pursue some early treatment now. She did explain, and I understand, that this is no 'cure' - it's to buy time, that's it. But I'll take that - as long as he's comfortable and it's not making him feel worse.

So the first course of action is surgery (next Friday) to remove this big lump in his neck. That will create some immediate relief and get rid of that mess, anyway. But she assured me I can assume that's not "all there is" and that something will turn up somewhere else, in time.

The second step is to treat him with drug therapy. She is unfamiliar with this particular type of cancer (it's kind of uncommon, though not rare) - but that didn't bother me because she was open enough to admit that, and told me over the next few days she'd be researching it to see whether it responds to chemotherapy, or what kind of drug protocol it might respond to. She also told me she'd be consulting with all the vets in the office, the newer vets with the 'fresh out of medical school' latest information, and the older, "experience from the trenches" vets who may have dealt with this type of thing many times before. I thought that was pretty damned cool, that they're willing to put their heads together and come up with the best treatment course for Tyler.

If there's a chemo protocol, they'll try it. She told me chemo is different in animals - it doesn't make them sick or weak or cause their hair to fall out. Basically there are no real side effects from it. This is because in animals, they don't give chemo 'full bore' - in mega high doses like they do in people. She didn't go into details, and I didn't care, but I suspect this has to do with the way dogs age and metabolize - everything is 'sped up' in dogs, like how you've always heard that every year of a dog's life is like 7 in humans, so a 10 year old dog is like 70. That's not quite accurate, as they've adjusted those scales somewhat, but you get the gist.

Anyway - if there is no chemo protocol, there's another drug she wants to try. I believe it's called Rimadyl - it's a human arthritis drug that she said has shown amazing abilities to shrink and even kill cancer tumors in dogs.

So ... that's the plan for now. Surgery to remove the worst of the mess physically, then drug therapy to hope to contain it for awhile ... to buy some time (hopefully quality time) ... and just take it one day at a time.

I'm very, very sad, but there's one thing that makes this somewhat bearable. With Tyler being 16, of course I've known for awhile it was 'only a matter of time.' And as she pointed out, even without this happening, his life expectancy might have not been much more than a year or so. If I can get through the summer, then ... I guess how I want to say this is, we may not have lost much from him getting cancer, it may be that what time we get would have been about all we had anyway. So ... that does help it not seem quite so devastating.

But the hard part is knowing. When nothing specific was wrong, though I knew he was old, I could kind of ignore it and just not think about it. Now, with this diagnosis, it's like a ticking time bomb I can hear all the time.

For his part, Tyler seems to be doing okay. He's still eating well, still not choking on his food, has a decent amount of energy - once in awhile when we're outside, he even gives a little hop and takes off running. He did that to me the other day and I wasn't expecting it, and he was headed straight for a tree - I had to rein him in just to keep him from running into the tree. ;o) So ... that kind of thing is what makes me want to keep on keeping on, at least for awhile.

I'd at least like to get well into summer - Tyler likes being outside and going for walks, and it's been a miserable winter with it being so cold and snowy, and him cooped up inside and not getting to do anything fun at all. If we can get into summer, he can enjoy being outside and going for walks again. I'd like to see that.

And on that note, I guess I'll keep you posted.