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!