Maddie had her one-week-post-first-chemo-treatment blood draw today to check her blood counts. They look good! Maddie seems to be tolerating chemo well so far!

(And it was a vet visit that cost only three figures -- we haven't seen that over the last few months... )

I'm not sure I've said this here yet, but cancer sucks. I know we all know that, but sometimes you just need to say it "out loud" to other people.

Before anyone panics, nothing major or terrible or tragic has happened. Maddie had her second dose of chemo on Friday and treatment is a reminder that cancer is why we are going through this journey. It is so easy to forget about the cancer when she is acts so happy and playful and when she is so comfortable and pain-free. Until it is chemo day.

The oncologist noted two lumps during Maddie's physical exam that she hadn't noticed before. She said they seemed softer and not hard the way cancer lumps usually are. She offered to do an aspirate test and have them tested or to note the in the chart and track them a bit. We opted to just have her check them at exams for now -- we didn't want to put Maddie through additional procedures and we already know she has cancer.

Maddie's white blood count levels were a bit low again today. It was right below the ideal cutoff for doing chemo, but barely below (like 20-30 below for a count in the thousands). The oncologist said we could either delay chemo and wait a week to check the levels again or go forward and put Maddie on antibiotics for 10 days. The oncologist felt comfortable with either option. Given how close she was to the cut off, we opted to proceed with chemo as scheduled. 

Chemo itself went fine and without incident. Maddie has to be sedated because she is a nervous-nelly and a big girl, so she had some lingering effects the rest of that evening related to that. She had a bit of urine dribbling again for a couple hours and was just generally out of it most of the day. All to be expected. 

But, man, are those couple days after difficult. I think because there is not much you can do but watch your dog not feel well and wait. The hours are looooooong. Chemo seems to make Maddie nauseous or reluctant to eat. Both this time and after the first dose she came home and immediately ate a small bowl of food. But then she loses interest in eating for 24+ hours. After the first dose of chemo, she ate full meal at about 5pm the next day (so about 24 hours after coming home). After this dose, it wasn't until the following morning (so about 36 hours after coming home). There were times where she seemed interested in food (so probably was feeling hungry), but if we put something in front of her (whether a treat or regular food), she didn't want to take it. Or she'd take a treat one minute, but refuse the same treat later. She mopes around, doesn't seem to relax very comfortably. But the she eats, and pretty quickly seemed much more like her old self.

Last night she crawled up on the couch for some snuggles. She isn't a super snuggly dog a lot of the time, so it was nice. But the picture shows how well her incision is healing and her fur growing back.

And just a cute picture of Maddie wagging her tail in her sleep.

Perhaps the most annoying thing right now -- Maddie has figured out that pill pockets have pills in them so she now refuses to take them. Why are they so smart and adaptable?!?