Things Change way to Fast

Sadie having fun on Sunday May 1

Since I wrote that last entry this morning, things have drastically changed. Sadie has NO energy, has not ate anything all day, has been panting all day and shaking at times. She won't even give kisses, which anyone who has ever been around her knows that this is not her normal!! We took her outside to play and she proceeded to go and stand under the apple tree for at least 15 minutes. She would slowly walk my way if I called her, but would have much rather just stood in her spot. The most activity she had was when Matt walked out into the backyard after work. She slowly trotted up the hill to greet him and proceeded to start panting like she had just got done playing frisbee in the 90 degree heat. I did place a call to the vet and they are wondering if the chemo is no longer working and the chemo has now spread. We are going to the vet Friday morning ( we are hoping she lasts that long). Not sure what they are going to do for her there, but at least we can have someone look at her. To us, her lymphnodes are not any larger, but that doesn't mean that the cancer hasn't spread to her organs. This has been such an emotional day. Every time Matt would call to check up on her my tears would start flowing. I just can't imagine our life without her and now I am afraid that we are sooner to that than I was hoping. We knew that we only had 6-9 months with her and we are almost to that 6 month mark. It's just not fair! She is such an awesome dog and such a wonderful part of our family.

We had the talk with Nora tonight about Sadie possibly going to heaven. She was not happy about that at all. She didn't get sad, just mad. She doesn't want Sadie to leave. Sadie is so wonderful with the girls. I can only hope that if we get another dog that it is half the dog Sadie is. She is the best!!

Please keep all the prayers coming, pray for Sadie's comfort. Pray that Matt and I know when to say when, because right now, we don't know what to do!

Latest News

So we are 5 months out from Sadie's original diagnosis of lymphoma. We went back to the oncologist on Thursday April 28 for another recheck exam, 8 weeks out from changing chemo drugs. We had felt some more lymph nodes and the vet stated that they are all firm and more than likely are not anything to worry about. We did have to start Sadie back up on her liver medication. Her liver enzymes are improving and the vet suspects the liver continues to heal itself, however, she still wanted to continue with the liver protectant for another month.
We thought Sadie was doing well. She still has good energy level when we go outside to play, just needs a lot longer recovery time after. However, in the last few days her appetite has begun to decrease. Also at night after she receives her chemo and prednisone, she begins to pant and seems very anxious, she can't sit still and needs to be at either Matt's or my side all evening. Matt was wondering if it is the prednisone. We originally had prednisone that the vet gave us then when we ran out and we got the drug from the Walmart pharmacy. It is a bigger pill with obviously a different manufacturer. Does anyone know if this would make a difference? Or does this happen because she has been on the drug for so long? I guess these would be good questions for the vet, huh?
Last night Matt and I began to have the discussion, how do we know when enough is enough. She certainly is not the same dog she once was. She still wants to play, but can't play very long, and needs a long time to recover after. It saddens me to even begin to think like that, but I know we are going to have to make a decision one day. I hope Sadie will let us know when she has had enough.


***As I am writing this, I just realized maybe the chemo is making her nauseas and that's why she's not eating!! I gave her one of her anti-nausea meds (had to shove it down her throat because she wouldn't eat the cheese or peanut butter) and we will see what happens! If this doesn't help, I will be calling the vet.

Update

Sadie had her 2 week followup visit with the oncologist last Thursday and things are looking good. We don't have to go back for another 3 weeks. Her lab work is great! We are to continue with her chemo at home indefinatly and her prednisone. Her liver pill is almost done...only 5 more doses to go!! She still has her energy, however, after chasing 2 squirrels in one day, she was wiped out by bed time! Thank you all for your continued support!!

This was taken while she was still on prednisone...the little begger!!

I took Sadie in today for her 4th chemo treatment. We have some good news and some bad news that goes along with it. The good news is that we have figured out why Sadie hasn't been eating or drinking...the bad news is it's because the chemo is hurting her liver. Because of this she did not get her 4th chemo treatment and the oncologist is stopping it all together. We knew going into this that the particular type of drug we used could potentially cause liver problems, but when they drew her labs 2 weeks ago, her liver enzymes were normal...not anymore. To give you an example: her ALT is 1238, normal is between 12-118, her ALP is 379, normal is between 5-131, her GGT is 22, normal is between 1-12. The only level that was normal was her total bilirubin count. So unfortuanatly is appears she is having a reaction to the chemo. Her lymph nodes remain small, so the elevated liver enzymes are not a progression of her lymphoma, which is good, but rather a reaction to the CCNU (the type of chemo she is receiving). We are completely stopping the CCNU and giving her a week off from chemo altogether and treating her with a liver protectant medication, we are also giving her an anti-nasusea med to get her eating again.

In an effort to keep the lymphoma at bay, she gave us 3 options. The first 2 are just way out of our league finacially, the third we can do...thank goodness! We are going to be trying another type of chemo drug called Luekeran in combination with prednisone. The great thing about this is that we give the treatment at home. She will have to go in 2 weeks after we start to have labs drawn, but then only goes in once every 6-8 weeks. The oncologist feels this could be a great option for Sadie since she did finish half of her CCNU treatment and is in complete remission.

We are hoping and praying that this will give us the same amount of time with her as we were hoping to get with the CCNU. We are so not ready to have her leave us. I am just hoping that she will start eating again. The vet also gave us the ok to feed her whatever, including any and all people food. So on the way home from the vet she ate some of mommy's fries and cheeseburger from McDonalds :)

Thank you all for your continued support and prayers for our little furbaby!!!

Update On Sadie Layne

My baby wouldn't even look at me when I was trying to take her picture :(

Just thought I would update everyone as to Sadie's progress. She was doing so great but over the past few days she has started acting slightly different. Not sure how to explain it, we just know her so well that she is not acting like her happy, crazy self. We are halfway with her CCNU treatments (chemo treatments) and she was doing great, in complete remission after 2 treatments. We were even able to wean her off of her prednisone (the steroid) in the last week. However, in the past two days she has began to not act like herself. She is tired and seems to want to be by herself a lot, doesn't want to eat and won't take her antibiotics that she was started on last week due to a low white blood cell count. Last night I found another very small lump under her neck. This morning she is not eating and Matt thinks she may have had a seizure. She came in from outside and he heard her nails scratching the wood floor and a crash so he came running and she could barely walk and couldn't figure out how to sit down. She was staring into space and within about 30 seconds she was back to normal but breathing hard. Weird. I don't know if it's because we stopped the prednisone or what. The treatment has been working great and she has had no side effects from it, aside from being very thirsty and hungry. I also took her temp (not fun if you know where I had to take it :) ) and she is not running a fever. I guess we will just continue monitoring her. She is due for her 4th chemo treatment next Thursday, but I will be calling the oncologist sooner is she continues this odd behavior. Here's hoping she is just in a slump and will bounce back quick!

Remission

I keep forgetting to share our great news about Sadie! After her last visit with the oncologist on Jan 28, we were informed that she is in complete remission!! Now I know what remission means, but I needed the vet to clarify what exactly that means for Sadie. Basically she said, the Lymph nodes are no longer detectable, and if she were to aspirate from them she would find NO cancer remaining!! The length of remission is based on when we first started her chemo treatments, back on Jan 7. So the remission should hopefully last 6-9 months from then!

As far as how Sadie is doing now, she is still full of energy. However, I did notice that after we watched my inlaws dog for the weekend by Sunday, Sadie, was very tired. She needed more than just a day to recover too. She also remains VERY hungry and thirsty. For the first time she ate some chocolate, still wrapped in the foil, that was laying by the front door, still in the package...the package had been opened, but before starting this prednisone, she NEVER ate anything like that. She always knew that it wasn't for her and would smell it, but never touch it. She is also trying to eat the girls crackers if they leave the bowl on the coffee table. As far as thirst, she can't get enough water. The problem with that...she has accidents! I am not going to complain though, she is still here with us!

We go back to the oncologist this Friday and hopefully we can stop the prednisone all together. That should help with her hunger and thirst.

Thanks for all of you who are following Sadie's progress. Your thoughts and prayers are working!!

Matt took Sadie to our regular vet on Friday for her one week followup post chemo and blood work. After he brought her home the vet called stating Sadie's white blood cell count is low and that they want to put her on antibiotics. We had to tell them that she is already on antibiotics due to a urinary tract infection. They decided to call the oncologist and let her know. Our oncologist called us and asked how Sadie is feeling, and she is feeling great. She said that the count is low, but not extremely low. She stated that Sadie may need to be on antibiotics the entire time she is on chemo or they may have to decrease the dose of chemo she is receiving. Right now because Sadie is feeling good and showing no signs of being sick, we are going to just finish the antibiotics and continue as planned. We go for our second chemo treatment on Friday January 28, so hopefully she will continue to do well!!

Yesterday she got to go over to her best bud, Murphy's, house! Matt and I left Sadie and the girls with Matt's parents so we could have a night out. Sadie and Murphy must have had a great time playing because today, Sadie is whipped! She has been catching up on sleep all day! So glad she got to see her buddy again, it's been too long!

Update

As crazy as this may sound, Sadie's lumps appear to be GONE!! I can't even fine the one that was on the right side and the ones on the left are much, much, much smaller! She goes in to our regular vet on Friday for an exam and some more blood work, just to make sure things are going good! Keep all the prayers coming, because they are working!!!

Day one after her first dose of Chemotherapy and Sadie is VERY tired. She is still eating and drinking well. In fact she is SUPER thristy! She will sit and drink an entire bowl of water in one sitting if we let her. Her appetite is still good and she would probably eat the entire bag of dog food if we gave it to her! Hopefully as the weekend progresses she will become less tired. But if that's the only side effect she has, we will take it!!

P.S. As you can see by the picture, we are spoiling her to pieces! She is now aloud on the couches, but only when we are up there too!

Sadie Layne Longest

As many of you know Matt and I have had our sweet Sadie since she was 6 weeks old. Over the past seven years our oldest "child" has become such a huge part of our lives. She is the best dog we could have ever asked for. We were worried what would happen when we decided to bring children into the family and Sadie adapted so well. She changed her puppy kisses from great big slobbery ones to little tongue barely out of the mouth kisses. (She has since changed back to the slobbery ones since the girls are no longer babies!) We don't know what we would do without her.

Having said that, we recently learned that Sadie has Lymphoma. Lymphoma is a cancer that develops from cells in the immune system called the lymphocytes that circulate through the blood. Without treatment, dogs only last 1-2 months. With treatment, Chemotherapy, dogs survive anywhere from 6-18 months, in some case longer, in some cases shorter. This kind of cancer is NEVER cured, it only goes into remission, and that remission and only short term. Some dogs also go into a second remission, but that one last about half as long as the first.

So here is Sadie's story:

Matt found large lumps on both sides of her neck on a Sunday morning December 12. By Thursday, Dec 16, we had her in the vet and they took a sample and sent it to MSU. We received that results on Wed Dec 22. They showed that some cells had broken but the cells that remained looked like Lymphoma, however, due to the cells being broken they could not 100% say that that is indeed what it was. So, we prayed that they were wrong and a we opted to get another sample taken on Thursday Dec 23. Well, the results came back exactly the same, still unable to 100% say that it was lymphoma. After talking with Sadie's vet, Matt and I decided to have a consult with an oncologist, cancer doctor. Dr. Swanson, the oncologist, sat and talked with us about this horrible disease and ALL of our options for over an hour. She also did another needle aspirate of one of her lumps and she was able to read it right there in the office and we found out with 100% certainty that Sadie indeed has Lymphoma. After this appointment I felt sad but also relief. We finally know for sure that this is what it is and we can get on with the treatment. I am also happy that they had an affordable option for us instead of just putting her on prednisone, not saying that only doing prednisone is wrong, I just feel like, as Matt said "We can at least try to fight for her." We opted for a low cost Chemo drug in combination with prednisone. Traveling, cost, and Sadie's quality of life were our three factors. Sadie only has to go to the vet once every 3 weeks for 6 treatments. We are hoping that this gives us another 6-9 months. Dr. Swanson seems very hopeful due to the fact that we found the lumps so fast and acted on them so quickly, that Sadie should do good. She also said that if we are going to do the Chemo we shouldn't wait...so we started today.

Nora and Gretchen went with me to drop her off. The appointment was 1 1/2 hours long so we opted to go to my parents house to wait. Dr. Swanson said she did great. Her bloodwork prior to chemotherapy looked great and the vet was very happy with the fact that after just 2 doses of prednisone, Sadie's lumps have significantly decreased in size!!! The only problem today is that Sadie's UA, urinalysis, show that her urine is very dilute, which could be due to the prednisone, but it also showed that she has some bacteria in her urine which indicates a urinary tract infection. So, she is starting on antibiotics today! Thank goodness she takes pills so well!

As far as now, she is very tired, as we suspected she was going to be. I just hope that she continues to have a good appetite and doesn't get too sick. She was rather unhappy with me when I picked her up, she wouldn't even look at me in the car! Maybe next time I should make Matt take her, I hate being the "bad guy!"

Right now Sadie is still the same old Sadie. Happy, jumpy, and spunky! She doesn't even know she is sick. I hope she stays that way for a long, long, time! I am very hopeful that maybe we can at least get her through these winter months so she can go outside and enjoy the sunshine a little before it's her time to go! I want to take her to the cottage again, to the beach, to all of her favorite places, one last time. I want to play frisbee with her and watch her chase the kids around the backyard in the warm sunshine.

Ok, now that I am blubbering all over my computer, it's time for me to sign off. I will be updating this during Sadie's treatment. I realized it would be a lot easier for me to share her progress!!