I have a question for the good doctor: My cousin passed away last December after a very prolonged battle with inflammatory breast cancer. One of the long term effects from her treatment was that she developed COPD. Rio has this cough — some days are worse than others. She has had it for months now, and after x-rays, neither the vet nor the oncologist could tell me what was causing it. There was "webbing" in the bronchial tubes and the vet said maybe bronchitis.

Rio's had radiation (near her heart and lungs), plus two rounds of chemo — is there a possibility that this cough is a secondary, long term side effect from the cancer treatments (similar to what my cousin experienced)? If not, what other explanation might be given for this cough? (I can get digital copies of her x-rays if that would help…)

With OSA, how often should you do lung xrays? Is there sort of a standard amount of time that oncologists usually recommend in between – either with or without mets?

Obviously, in our case, Abby has stupid mets. (One is – well, was the last time we saw it anyway – golf-ball sized. That's Boris. The other, Natasha, is smaller and a chip off Boris' block. sigh. They are in the lower 'back 40' of her lungs – at least that's what I call it. Sorta the lower rent district, so not up by her airways. As I understand it, this is a good thing. If there can be good things about lung mets.)

We have been doing xrays ~ every 3 months, and each time it has informed the various decisions we've made along the way. We are due for some the end of this month. After the last ones in July we had to stop her Palladia because it wasn't agreeing with her, but she is still on MP (Cytoxan) and we added in artemisinin. In general, I don't really want to know what's going on in there. She is happy and has tons of energy, so I'd rather be blissfully unaware. On the other hand, if by some miracle the arte is helping, that would be good to know. But if it's NOT helping, I don't really wanna know. Her onc mentioned in July that we could try another kind of IV chemo, but we didn't want to put her through that. So, I'm thinking whether it's good news (slow growth/no new mets) or bad news (fast growth/new mets), we'll still just keep doing what we are doing, so what is the point in knowing?

Anyway, those are the 'specifics' of my question, but basically the more general question is just, "is there a rule of thumb as to how often to do xrays?"

I am the Mom of a Tripod, but the amputation was not due to cancer and she is well! But I lost another Baby (lab/shepherd mix – 80 lbs) to a very agressive sarcoma (?) that developed and killed him within 30 days in 2008. Started as a large and rapidly growing tumor in his neck, collarbone region. He was 13 at the time and I had a biopsy done and I still feel sick that I put him through the trauma of the biopsy. I had to make the decision to let him go before we even got the results back and I have been sad about this ever since. My question to you is…is there an age or any other indicators at which point you would suggest not putting a dog through the rigors of treatment? Even though he only had a few weeks left at onset, I wish so very much that I had not put him through the trauma of the biopsy. I have been second-guessing myslef ever since.

I am selfishly so happy he had to reschedule but hate that there was an emergency…

My question – with osteosarcoma is there are period after which the chance of anything surfacing or returning has decreased? The further out we get from diagnosis, amputation and chemo treatment the more nervous I get.  Is there something I can do, other than diet & supplements, that might help?

Darcy & Bart