txblueyez82
New member
- Jan 9, 2025
- 2
- 2
- Country
- United States
- Bulldog(s) Names
- Bailey
It is the wee hours of the morning on the first day without my girl and I canāt shut my brain down.
Bailey was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma (HSA) in October 2024. This is my first experience with HSA and this is also our first bulldogā¦.who was 10 years and 8 months old at the time of her diagnosis. We adopted her from a rescue group at the age of two. She was everything to us. Bailey was a healthy girl and her only significant medical history was having bilateral TPLO surgery at 8 years old.
Back in October, a mass was found in her intestines. We scheduled her for a biopsy. During that biopsy, it was thought that the mass was rupturing and she had to go into emergency surgery to have it removed. After surgery, she ended up with aspiration pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for 8 days. We almost lost her to the pneumonia but she beat it. On the day after she was discharged, she was rolling in the grass, sunning herself like a happy bulldog. Unfortunately, after she went through all that, we received the biopsy results of HSA with METS to the liver the day before her discharge. She was given 3-6 months with Chemo, but the prognosis was dim no matter what we decided due to how aggressive this cancer is.
I found a Facebook group for Canine Hemangiosarcoma and obsessed over what our next move was. Bailey had insurance so nothing was off the table. After countless hours of research, my husband and I opted to treat her with Chemo to give her the best shot. She had three rounds of chemo treatment that were three weeks apart. Her last treatment was 12/26/24. She was handling everything great with little to no side effects. On 1/5/25, everything took a turn. She woke up acting strange. Throughout the day, she developed respiratory difficulty and had multiple cyanotic episodes (tongue and gums would turn blue) if she moved around too much. We rushed her to the hospital Sunday night and would find out that she had pneumonia again. She did ok at first on oxygen but rapidly declined Tuesday out of no where. They tried hooking her up to high flow oxygen, which helped temporarily, but she steadily kept declining. It has highly believed that she threw a blood clot some time Tuesday. Yesterday, Wednesday 1/8/25, we made the difficult decision to euthanize her. During her hospital stay, I started to hear a common theme from the multiple doctors that took care of herā¦..senior bulldog, with very aggressive cancer, bring treated by chemo is going to be more susceptible to pneumonia and blood clots because of the way chemo compromises the immune system.
I work in the medical field. I thought I did my research thoroughly based on my human medical knowledge and truly thought we were doing what what was best. I discussed it with my husband and we made the decision together. But, he knows nothing about the medical worldā¦and I feel like he trusted what I was comfortable with. I know what chemo does to us but was told dogs have it much easier with little to no side effects. And, usually side effects are gastrointestinal related. I knew that Chemo compromised the immune system and can cause blood clots in the human world. But because I kept reading stories of dogs rocking through Chemo without any issues, I didnāt think about the other side of it for our Bailey. We were not pushed into Chemo by her oncologist. He told us that our prognosis was grim no matter which way we went.
HSA does what it wants, with no rhyme or reason on how it acts and how each dog responds. I read through countless experiences on the HSA Facebook group and thought if we combined chemo with holistic therapy, we were giving her the best shot.
What I failed to do though was find support from other bulldog owners about the side effects they have experienced with Chemo. We all know that bulldogs are different. I stumbled on this page and wanted to share my story with other bulldog owners. In my devastating grief right now, I am absolutely guilt ridden for the decision to put her through chemo. And while we were going to lose her either way to this horrible cancer, I canāt help but wonder if her time with us would have been longer if she wouldnāt have caught pneumonia from, what I now believe, to be her chemo immuno compromised system.
I know that I canāt change anything but wanted to share our experience, my thoughts, and am looking for support in my heartbroken state.
Bailey was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma (HSA) in October 2024. This is my first experience with HSA and this is also our first bulldogā¦.who was 10 years and 8 months old at the time of her diagnosis. We adopted her from a rescue group at the age of two. She was everything to us. Bailey was a healthy girl and her only significant medical history was having bilateral TPLO surgery at 8 years old.
Back in October, a mass was found in her intestines. We scheduled her for a biopsy. During that biopsy, it was thought that the mass was rupturing and she had to go into emergency surgery to have it removed. After surgery, she ended up with aspiration pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for 8 days. We almost lost her to the pneumonia but she beat it. On the day after she was discharged, she was rolling in the grass, sunning herself like a happy bulldog. Unfortunately, after she went through all that, we received the biopsy results of HSA with METS to the liver the day before her discharge. She was given 3-6 months with Chemo, but the prognosis was dim no matter what we decided due to how aggressive this cancer is.
I found a Facebook group for Canine Hemangiosarcoma and obsessed over what our next move was. Bailey had insurance so nothing was off the table. After countless hours of research, my husband and I opted to treat her with Chemo to give her the best shot. She had three rounds of chemo treatment that were three weeks apart. Her last treatment was 12/26/24. She was handling everything great with little to no side effects. On 1/5/25, everything took a turn. She woke up acting strange. Throughout the day, she developed respiratory difficulty and had multiple cyanotic episodes (tongue and gums would turn blue) if she moved around too much. We rushed her to the hospital Sunday night and would find out that she had pneumonia again. She did ok at first on oxygen but rapidly declined Tuesday out of no where. They tried hooking her up to high flow oxygen, which helped temporarily, but she steadily kept declining. It has highly believed that she threw a blood clot some time Tuesday. Yesterday, Wednesday 1/8/25, we made the difficult decision to euthanize her. During her hospital stay, I started to hear a common theme from the multiple doctors that took care of herā¦..senior bulldog, with very aggressive cancer, bring treated by chemo is going to be more susceptible to pneumonia and blood clots because of the way chemo compromises the immune system.
I work in the medical field. I thought I did my research thoroughly based on my human medical knowledge and truly thought we were doing what what was best. I discussed it with my husband and we made the decision together. But, he knows nothing about the medical worldā¦and I feel like he trusted what I was comfortable with. I know what chemo does to us but was told dogs have it much easier with little to no side effects. And, usually side effects are gastrointestinal related. I knew that Chemo compromised the immune system and can cause blood clots in the human world. But because I kept reading stories of dogs rocking through Chemo without any issues, I didnāt think about the other side of it for our Bailey. We were not pushed into Chemo by her oncologist. He told us that our prognosis was grim no matter which way we went.
HSA does what it wants, with no rhyme or reason on how it acts and how each dog responds. I read through countless experiences on the HSA Facebook group and thought if we combined chemo with holistic therapy, we were giving her the best shot.
What I failed to do though was find support from other bulldog owners about the side effects they have experienced with Chemo. We all know that bulldogs are different. I stumbled on this page and wanted to share my story with other bulldog owners. In my devastating grief right now, I am absolutely guilt ridden for the decision to put her through chemo. And while we were going to lose her either way to this horrible cancer, I canāt help but wonder if her time with us would have been longer if she wouldnāt have caught pneumonia from, what I now believe, to be her chemo immuno compromised system.
I know that I canāt change anything but wanted to share our experience, my thoughts, and am looking for support in my heartbroken state.
.
