Tripawds Three Legged Dog & Cat Forum Archives
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Hello, I joined the site a couple of months ago and have been a reader so far, thanks to everyone for the wonderful help and advice you give to other members. We have a beautiful 6.5 year old Rottie girl called Kaya, she was diagnosed with suspected osteosarcoma in March on her left front shoulder and had her amputation surgery on April 12th. Her wound took a long time to heal, she had a small dead flap of skin which did not heal over and she had to have a drain a week or so after her surgery but all healed now, she is coping well on 3 legs and otherwise eating and fine (apart from eye ulcers which are being treated separately).
We are in the UK and this is the 2nd time we have gone through this, our gorgeous boy Rottie , Conna, had the same osteosarcoma, same leg, 12 years ago - we are devastated to be going through this again, it is such an unfair and horrible disease.
I would like to ask for some advice, Kaya has had 2 doses of carboplatin with 2 more to go, the problem we are having is that she has no more patience with needles and being poked around with, she is an absolute sweetheart and so gentle and very well behaved but she is just fed up of being poked about with.
Our vets are not experienced oncologists but have done a great job with her surgery and post surgery care. They want to take bloods to check her white cell and platelets a few days before the chemo and again on the day of the chemo, we expect the bloods to be taken on the day of the chemo but in order for them to keep her still enough she now needs to be dosed up with Gabapentin and Trazodone before her visit and it is knocking her out very badly and she is losing a whole day not able to walk properly and sleeping all day, we do not want to do this more than necessary for the remaining chemo visits so do not want to do the mid cycle blood checks.
Does anyone have any thoughts or experience on this, the vets have said that if we do not have the pre check and then on the day her levels are too low to do the chemo we will have to pay for the chemo drug that will be wasted (approx £500 = $600), they checked her levels 10 days after her first chemo and they were low but not too low and then for the 2nd chemo her levels were also low but not too low to proceed so I am not sure of the risk if we decided not to do the pre check, the check on the day of the chemo will be done, it is just the extra one the few days before we want to stop. I wanted to ask if this is a common process as we did not have to do that for Conna and although it was a long time ago I expect the chemo drug used was the same
Any advice would be very welcome to help us make the decision.
11:13 am
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26 April 2007
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Hi Louise and Kaya, welcome! We are sorry you had to join our club (and dealing with osteosarcoma again!) but very glad you found us.
It's really great that Kaya is getting around so well! People get really nervous about having to decide on amputation for a Rottweiler, so it's nice that others can see that even bigger dogs like her can do well on three.
The sedation you describe is pretty common these days for dogs who are otherwise nervous in a vet clinic. It's a new protocol that vets even here in the US have been using lately. But as you can see, it can pack a wallop on certain dogs who are extra sensitive to Trazadone and Gabapentin.
Unfortunately the labs need to be done prior to chemo. Without them, you'll never know if her body is able to handle the treatment next time around. If she had low white blood cell counts and got the chemo (probably carboplatin?), it could put her in a dangerous health situation.
So what I would suggest is to 1) ask your vet if there are other ways to sedate her without knocking her out completely. Maybe a medication like Amantadine could work? That's a medication that also makes dogs sleepy, but it doesn't knock them out as much as Traz.
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