Thanks Brownie i really appreciate it x

Just to give a quick update, I'm currently sat in the starbucks near the hospital doing a little work having dropped Ronnie at the hospital at 11:15.

We had a good discussion with Dr Riccardo Finotello and talked about what it could possibly be. He's all but ruled out the outside chance of something cardiac related and feels it's either a touch of infection or kennel cough or Mets. He was unable to stimulate a cough response which suggests theres nothing trachial which is irrated in his throat but obviously they're all basic checks.

We have opted for a full body CT scan with a blood work up. This will take around 90 mins and they will then call me with 1 of the 2 outcomes.

Either there's no sign of mets and they will proceed with the chemo while he is sedated... or the CT shows evidence of mets and i head straight back over to the hospital to talk about next steps. 

Scans are discounted as he is a repeat so the ballpark is around £1000 or £500 dependent on scan alone or scan and chemo. The cost isn't a concern at this point as i can find a way to manage the money, this is more just for reference for anyone reading and hopefully being helped by this thread in the future. Once we get to the end of this process i plan to upload a spreadsheet with a full per line breakdown of costs for people to use to guide them....

The call just came in..

CLEAR! they can find nothing on the CT scan that suggests spread so they're doing chemo round 3 now while he's under. Honestly i couldn't be happier what a relief!!! i'll be picking him up in a few hours and will have a chat with the doctor and see if he thinks its infection, but it ISN'T METS and thats the important thing!!!

Brownie, we also do it by weight here and ronnie is around 22kg/ 48lbs now post op. At the current exchange thats just shy of $700 per round of chemo. But that doesn't include scans which are an additional £500/ $650 each time.