Canine Cancer Sucks!

Tuesday, June 9th was the worst! Our beautiful Zoey Girl, our golden Siberian Husky, was diagnosed with cancer. She had not been eating. She is usually a piggy. We found some remnants of socks in the back yard and we assumed she had a sock stuck somewhere inside of her. I took her to the vet and they kept her overnight for observation and x-rays. The vet saw some things that looked suspicious.

Marissa and I took her to a specialist in Salt Lake. The plan was to stick a scope into her stomach. After the specialist saw the x-ray he didn't think there was a sock in her and didn't do the scope. He thought something was wrong with her and recommended an ultrasound. He told us to go ahead and hang out in the waiting area for about 30 minutes. He took her back, shaved her belly and began the ultrasound. It was only a few minutes and he came out. Her gastrointestinal lymph nodes were huge.

He said he was 90% sure she had lymphoma. He kept talking but I wanted him to shut up! I kept thinking "Oh my Hell! My baby is going to die!" I held it together until he was done and then I went outside and found Marissa and we sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. He did a biopsy and then sent us back to our regular vet.

Zoey was dehydrated and needed IV fluids. We were advised to start her on chemotherapy as soon as possible and to not even wait to get the biopsy results back. We started her on chemo for lymphoma. On the way back to Layton she lay in the back of the car, totally doped and listless. Every time we looked back at her we sobbed some more. When we thought we were done being hysterical we would think of how sad Zeke will be without his companion and we started all over.

The report on the biopsy came back and the cancer is Mast Cells (which is in the same "round cell" cancer family as lymphoma). They do a special stain on the biopsy to discover the mast cells, the stain didn't work very well so this isn't a 100% diagnosis. The pathologist said that gastrointestinal mast cells don't react to the the stain as well as the cutaneous mast cells (skin tumors). Mast cells cause increased histamine and stomach acid. We started Zoey on Benadryl and Pepcid on Saturday night. Tonight she was such a piggy that she stole Zeke's dinner. She has been burying her little stuffed animals and ripping some of them apart....she is starting to feel a little better.

She is even talking again (yes, Huskies talk) and every time she wags her tail we feel like it is Christmas morning.

The prognosis is still pretty grim. IF the cancer responds well to the chemo she could possibly live another year. Based on the fact that the mast cells are in multiple internal lymph nodes the cancer is probably in stage III. For mast cells that means that it is past the point of surgical removal because it has spread. Mast cells respond well to steroids (which Zoey is on) and we will be starting her on a different chemotherapy drug called Vinblastine. It is administered through an IV weekly for 4 weeks and then every other week for another 4 weeks.

If it makes her miserable we will discontinue the therapy. She did well after her first treatment. So far so good.

There are a lot of websites on canine mast cells. Here is a good one: http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_mast_cell_tumors.html

Another website with technical information is: http://www.vin.com/VINDBPub/SearchPB/Proceedings/Pr05000/pr00390.htm