I'm sorry for your news….it's so difficult! Our Sam also developed mets while on chemo….in a 6 week span he went from 0 to 12 mets….and then over the next 6 weeks they doubled both in number and size. We continued to move forward with treatments and shifted our thinking from keeping mets away to now trying to slow down what was there and minimize new growth. Similar to Jerry, Sam also progressively got more tired but didn't show discomfort….not even a little. When the mets appeared, gven the number that showed up while on chemo, she thought he had about 8 weeks…..we had him for 17 weeks and treated every day as a gift! We put him on prednisone when his breathing started to get real heavy (last 8 weeks) and then his last 10 days we added a cough suppressant. Hang in there – we're thinking of you! Xo Sue

So, so sorry to hear about the lung mets. Lylee had Carboplatin 6 treatments and had minimal side effects mainly lethargy and slightly off her food (we gave her Cerenia for nausea for 3 days after each treatment).

Sending huge hugs

joanne & lylee

mck025 said:

I am so sorry to hear about Spencer's mets.  I don't know if this will help because my dog has hemangiosarcoma, not osteosarcoma, but our oncologist was able to shrink Percy's mets using a combination of vinorelbine and carboplatin.  I think she said that vinorelbine is supposed to have better penetration into the lungs.  We went to that treatment after status quo on doxorubicin and an increase in mets on carboplatin alone.

Thanks for that suggestion!  Spencer actually has fibrosarcoma rather than osteo (a soft tissue sarcoma).  I'm going to call and ask on Tuesday about also doing the vinorelbine…

It is tough because I wasn't there in the office.  I definitely need to get into the office to talk with the vet.

Well, I'm arriving pretty late to your post, but maybe I'll have something useful to say – let's see…

Yoda was on carboplatin (every 3 weeks, I think) for his osteosarcoma from the start.  He got mets while on it, but just depends on the dog and the cancer and who knows what else, so paws crossed for you that it'll have a better effect for Spence!  On the plus side, Yoda had very little trouble.  He did have some vomiting after… I think it was the second treatment, maybe the third, but the vet had sent us home with a med called Cerenia which gets rid of that real quick.  Yoda also seemed to eventually have an allergic reaction to the carboplatin that caused his eyes to ooze quite a bit of mucus, but some eye drops or cream (I'm forgetting which it was at the moment) cleared that right up.  Yoda's oncologist had never seen that reaction before.

Yoda unfortunately had issues with his lung mets bursting, which eventually led to the decision to euthanize in our case.  Hopefully you won't have to deal with that, but just to give you a head's up on what symptoms you might see if that happens: Yoda would cough up some blood (that alone is not necessarily an emergency if it's a just a little bit), he wouldn't be able to get comfortable (kept getting up and laying down over and over), and when he had a really bad burst his gums turned very pale and he had trouble getting his breath.  Pale gums are definitely something to rush to the vet over, so I recommend making a mental note of what color Spencer's gums normally look like.

Yoda also struggled a bit with nausea/loss of appetite towards the end.  I learned from his oncologist that it's fairly common that they'll have a certain time of day that is better or worse for their appetite and to try to determine when those times are so you can get him fed when his tummy is feeling best.  The anti-nausea drugs didn't always do the trick at that point.

Now that I've gone over some scary stuff, which hopefully is a long long long way off (like never) – lung mets aren't the end of the world.  Really!  Yoda was still quite active and happy for most of his time left between when his mets first showed up on the x-ray and when I had to let him go.  In fact, in his last week, he caught a rabbit in the backyard!

Best wishes for Spence to shrink those mets!

I did ask about prednisone since that was the main thing that we did with our last doberman (the one who got straight up lung cancer).  The oncologist dicouraged prednisone, I can't remember all of it; but he said it wouldn't have much of an effect other than making Spence pee a lot and drink tons of water.  I do think on Tuesday (first day the oncologist will be back in the office) I'm going to call to see if I can schedule a time to come in and talk about everything and look at the x-rays.  I just want to make sure we are doing the best thing…

We are sorry of read of Spencer's newest issue.  Sounds like Spencer is fighting the good fight and you guys are doing all the right things with emphasis on quality of time…