Curly's Lymphoma Treatment

[rjisaterp]

Thanks Roger. Stu did get to see curly over Memorial Day weekend.Stu will be back again in 2 weeks

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Still waiting for my food order from LA.

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[2BullyMama]

Hi Curly. Hang in there big guy. Nu...you and Stu hang in there too. Praying for you and Jewel as well as she was under the weather today with diarrhea.

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Oh no... Jewel, come on pretty girl, we are all pulling and praying hard for you too! Hugs baby girl


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[Manydogs]

[MENTION=9956]nubonics[/MENTION] Curly looks so good, and so content relaxing with his Daddy. Still praying for him.... and [MENTION=11639]rjisaterp[/MENTION] praying also for Jewel hoping that she feels better and makes progress with her treatments.

 

[nubonics]

Today we decided to do the 2nd line of treatment. The good news is that Curly did go into remission in the past week, so we just need to have him stay in remission.

Yesterday, my husband and I had a conference call with the vet to discuss our concerns. The Madison Wisconsin (MW) protocol that works with 80% of dogs, failed with Curly. "Why did this happen? What does this mean? How do we know that the Tanovea protocol will work?"

What we learned is that the cancer genetic makeup plays a large role in whether or not MW will work. Again, we caught it early, so the natural route would be to go with the MW protocol which works for 80% of dogs with lymphoma. His lymph nodes did not shrink significantly enough after week 1. In fact, the vet explained to us that the cancel cells were growing still. The best case would have been for Curly to go into remission after week 1. Since he did not, and the cancer still existed, it still kept the lymph node enlarged.

Since the MW is a cocktail of chemo meds, we went three more weeks with Curly going into partial remission - basically, meaning while the "original" cancer cells died, there were new cancer cells taking their place...this means that the chemo drugs that were used in week 1-3 cannot be used again because the cancer cells have built a resistance.

Changing protocol to Tanovea means that it is a bigger bite of money but a shorter duration under treatment (the difference in cost between the 26 week MW and The 14 week Tanovea protocol is about $1K). Week 1 - Tanovea, Week 2 - CBC test, Week 3 - OFF, Week 4- Tanovea, Week 5 - CBC test, Week 6 - OFF ... so on and so forth until we hit week 14.

The current goal is to keep him in remission. We really won't know if Tanovea will work or not, but the hope is that his lymph nodes will stay small and we would likely know by week 6 if Tanovea is working.

If it doesn't work, then the specialist would want to introduce another chemo drug to do a combo of Tanovea and the other chemo drug. If this happens, we are going to stop treatment. At some point, as my husband put it, "we will need to pull the band-aid off."

So keep those positive thoughts and prayers for Curly coming our way. We really appreciate having a forum to share our story.

 

[rjisaterp]

Keep fighting Curly. Jewel is despite her projectile diarrhea. Prayers to you bud, mommy, daddy and my Jewelie.

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[2BullyMama]

Continued. Hugs, prayers and positive thoughts for you and your handsome Curley!!


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[2BullyMama]

Keep fighting Curly. Jewel is despite her projectile diarrhea. Prayers to you bud, mommy, daddy and my Jewelie.

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(((Hugs))). Jewely girl!!


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[nubonics]

[MENTION=11639]rjisaterp[/MENTION] Oh no! Knock on wood, we haven't had any side effects except extreme hunger and the need to urinate (he is still on 1/2 pill of prednisone per day - after the blood work next week, assuming all goes well, we will be able to reduce that to 1/2 a pill every other day).

many prayers for Jewel!!

 

[rjisaterp]

[MENTION=11639]rjisaterp[/MENTION] Oh no! Knock on wood, we haven't had any side effects except extreme hunger and the need to urinate (he is still on 1/2 pill of prednisone per day - after the blood work next week, assuming all goes well, we will be able to reduce that to 1/2 a pill every other day).

many prayers for Jewel!!

Thanks. We were warned this would happen. She has meds for it but she is still having the issue. Jewel too drinks a lot and her appetite is good. Sleeping more as well.

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[nubonics]

Thanks. We were warned this would happen. She has meds for it but she is still having the issue. Jewel too drinks a lot and her appetite is good. Sleeping more as well.

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What week is she at now?

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[rjisaterp]

What week is she at now?

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Week 5. She had follow-up last week with ultrasound. All within normal limits.

Jewel squirts 3 feet...poor girl. I have never seen this before.This has occurred twice this morning with the wife and twice with me today. Clean her up with 5 huggies wipes. Thank God I am home to take her out several times a day and evening.

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[nubonics]

Week 5. She had follow-up last week with ultrasound. All within normal limits.

Jewel squirts 3 feet...poor girl. I have never seen this before.This has occurred twice this morning with the wife and twice with me today. Clean her up with 5 huggies wipes. Thank God I am home to take her out several times a day and evening.

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Poor baby!! We have a dog run that curly has 24 hour access to, so when I do need to run out, I confine him near the door to the dog run.

I have to keep the other dogs separated from him for a Three days after the chemo treatment because they started acting differently when he comes home (I suspect that he smells different). Given the GD and his history, i have been keeping them apart until 3 days after chemo treatment

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[rjisaterp]

Poor baby!! We have a dog run that curly has 24 hour access to, so when I do need to run out, I confine him near the door to the dog run.

I have to keep the other dogs separated from him for a Three days after the chemo treatment because they started acting differently when he comes home (I suspect that he smells different). Given the GD and his history, i have been keeping them apart until 3 days after chemo treatment

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We have to wear gloves giving Jewel her pills (she get 3 every other day except Sat. and Sun.) After cleaning her up we have to wash our hands twice. This crap is most definitely poison. 5 months to go.

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[nubonics]

We have to wear gloves giving Jewel her pills (she get 3 every other day except Sat. and Sun.) After cleaning her up we have to wash our hands twice. This crap is most definitely poison. 5 months to go.

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When we were on the other protocol, we had to use gloves to give him the pills. The Tanovea protocol is much more expensive but he is done the Tuesday before Labor day...so definitely not as long as poor jewel baby.

So far he hasn't had any bad side effects (knock on wood). He did have bloody diarrhea/infection that lasted a couple days. they said Tanovea is too new for them to know if it related to tanovea (I'm leaning towards tanovea).

Curly is also experiencing some ototoxicity. That's basically a fancy way to say hearing loss due to medications. Supposingly, his hearing will come back fully when he is done chemo but he sometimes hears me and sometimes doesn't...

I thought for a bit, he was just being a bulldog but when he didn't react to his 2 favorite words (cheese and ball) I knew something was up.

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[tigertanktoo]

Good luck to both Curly and Jewel. We will keep you both in our prayers and hopes that all will be well soon.