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!!