Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat
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Hello! My baby Butch finished his 6th and final round of chemo and handled it all very well. Thank you Jesus!! However, one thing is bugging me. The oncology specialty center I take him to wants us to come back every 2 months for the next year to do chest xrays. If he makes it to a year, they said we can stretch it to every 3 months. It makes me wonder why I put him thru amputation and 6 months of chemo, if the cancer could return in just 2 months? Did your vet require this? Is it really necessary, or is this just a money grab? I could understand maybe coming back in 6 months, but every 2? Even if the cancer returns, I wouldn't do anything about it anyway at this point except pray for a miracle and give him as many good days as possible until he crosses the bridge - which is what I'm doing now anyway. Love to hear what follow-up schedule other have had with their oncology vets. Thx! 🙂
Melissa
Hi Melissa,
Congrats on finishing chemo- it's a big deal!
Does Butch have osteosarcoma? Assuming that is the case I'm thinking the suggested monitoring is to detect lung mets as soon as possible as there are some additional treatment options. Also, there are people who feel like they want or need to know if/when the disease progresses.
My Pug Maggie had a different cancer so the monitoring tests were different (not xrays) and were done every three months for the first year after she finished her chemo. Mag wasn't supposed to make it past 9 months so when we got there and she was still doing well I wanted to monitor for any spread. Maggie far outlived her prognosis but developed other health issues so once we got to the point that I wasn't going to do any further treatment then I stopped doing the monitoring.
If you are set on not doing further treatment then maybe you should have that conversation with your oncologist. I did that during Maggie's journey as well as with her younger sister who also developed recurring cancer. Our oncologist respected and supported my decisions to stop treatment and stop monitoring.
Karen and the Spirit Pug Girls and Boy
Tri-pug Maggie survived a 4.5 year mast cell cancer battle only to be lost to oral melanoma.
1999 to 2010
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        Maggie's Story          Amputation and Chemo
Hi Karen - yes, Butch's diagnosis was osteosarcoma. I appreciate your feedback. 🙂Â
Hi Melissa,
Karen gave you some great input. To that I'll add, that any treatment is optional, you don't have to do it if you don't want to or cannot afford it. The reason x-rays are recommended is so that if mets start growing, you can tackle them earlier rather than later. It increases the odds of keeping them under control and not spreading. Many new treatments are available to manage mets, so that Butch can go on enjoying a great quality of life.
But as Karen said, if you don't want to investigate further options and just do palliative care, that's OK too. Nobody here will judge you for that and we will support you no matter what.
On a personal note, we opted out of follow up x-rays for our Jerry, who also had osteosarcoma but didn't get IV chemo. 17 months later after surgery, a vet recommended we do them, and we found two mets. At the time I regretted not doing them sooner, but even if we had, there wasn't a lot of treatment choices back then other than taking out part of his lung and that was something we weren't going to do. Now today is a different story for me, and if we had to do follow up x-rays again, I just might. But again, every situation is different and personal. Make the choice that is right for you and Butch and you can't go wrong.
And congrats to Butch for graduating from chemo!
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