Last October 2010 our boxer Gabby was amputated and diagnosed with osteosarcoma. The hardest part is that she was only 2 years old. The cancer was in her front leg up in the shoulder area. The vet ampuated the entire arm. When she was in the vets care a few things went wrong. First I noticed that after her surgery she was bleeding much more than "normal". I finnaly conviced the vet that it was not "normal" like they kept telling me. After they did blood work, they found out she was in fact bleeding internally.

They had to go back in and tie off more veins. Then when she was at the vet "healling" she got some really bad infection, which they thought was from a poisoness spider bite on her back leg. The skin ended up getting so bad they had to remove a large chuck on the "dead" skin. For many months she had a softball size hole in her leg, that had to slowly heal on it own, which has taken a very long time. So since she had such a huge hole in her leg, we were never able to start the chemo medicine.

It is now 9 months after her amputation. Her back leg is pretty much all healed up, and we just got some blood work done, and new chest x rays this weekend. Both the blood work was perfect, and the 3 lung x rays showed no cancer metastasis. This is good news, so we met with the oncologist. She gave us the normal information "with amputation only they live for 4-6 months", and with chemo they have "10 to 12 months". So she said since gabby has already gone way past these numbers, she cannot give us an accurate number if we decided to do the chemo therapy.

I went ahead and made the appointment to start the first round this thursday july 21st, but still am having second thoughts. Not really sure why I am even on this website, maybe i just needed to talk to someone….

-paul

Hi Paul

So sorry your Gabby has been through so much stuff at such a young age. But on the other hand her back leg has healed and you have clean chest x rays after 9 months! That's wonderful!

I just started chemo with my Lylee. I was unsure what to do but so far I'm really feeling good about going ahead with chemo to give her the best chance to be with us for as long as possible. We are doing 6 rounds of Carboplatin. If at anytime we don't think Lylee is having a good quality of life we can stop the chemo.

Gabby is a young girl and so you can always start and then not continue if you don't like the side effects which can really vary with each dog. Lylee just seemed a bit lethargic and off her food for a few days so far. We took her to the beach on day 7 after her chemo and she is rolling and digging in the sand! I put a video on her blog (I sound a bit manic with joy! )

We really don't know how much the chemo will help but we are trying everything.

Whatever you decide it is all the right decision.  We love our furkids.

Sending best wishes,

Lylee's Mum