Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat

Thanks for asking. It's been a long haul. After we switched to the other chemo drug, we retested after 3 weeks and it wasn't good. The nodes he had before were bigger and there were new ones showing up.

So the oncologist said we should try Palladia and Losartan. I read on one of the forums that someone saw shrinkage of nodes with these pills. The vet said she had seen improvement in patients also but didn't have a lot of cases so far. So Palladia is the chemo drug. I give that Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The Losartan he gets twice a day every day. We are in our fifth week and he will have a scan this coming Friday.

Things went well at first but he has gotten much more lethargic and weaker. In the past few days, he has struggled while walking so I am very worried. This is a possible side effect of Palladia but could it be the cancer? This is Memorial Day so I didn't call the vet but I sent an email to the oncologist so I will see what she says hopefully tomorrow. I started giving him pain medication but it is hard to tell if he is in pain or just weak. He still has a good appetite, God bless him. He loves to eat.

I'll let everyone know how it turns out. Good luck to everyone struggling with this horrible cancer.

Well, not good news on Shiloh, but I felt I should let people know our story. 

Shiloh continued to get weaker on the Palladia and Losartan so much that I had to start helping him to get up and walking was wobbly. The oncologist suggested stopping the Palladia and then I stopped the Losartan also because both of those meds can have that side effect. So after about 5 days his walking was better. He went to the vet for a check of his blood. I also had them check a lump I had just found on his side.

So the lump was aspirated and sent to the pathologist. The report said this was a sarcoma but a different kind from the osteosarcoma, go figure. The oncologist says this does indicate that the Palladia/Losartan was not working the way we had hoped. I asked her why they didn't check his lungs to see if the nodes had shrunk, and she said with the oral medications they usually do the X-rays at 2 months and we were at 6 weeks. 

But I had stopped the meds so she said we could restart the Palladia/Losartan or get the X-ray now. I opted for the latter, but the appointment was for about 4 days from then. I should say that Shiloh had been occasionally having some kind of gagging in the rmorning. This suddenly got much worse and he started having these bouts of retching and gagging (that's what it looked like to me, but was it respiratory or digestive?) After a terrible night of this the oncologist had me try three kinds of nausea medicine together but there was no effect. His walking was getting bad again and we talked about possible problems in his one front leg.

I think I should have run him in on emergency but I didn't. So the day came to go for the X-ray but at this point his breathing was bad. I asked the oncologist on the phone if there was a path forward and she said she needed the tests but there might be a possibility of antibiotics. 

So after some soul searching I decided he had had enough. I am pretty sure the cancer is causing all the symptoms, even without the X-rays and to start the chemo again might mean his walking that is bad now would be even worse. It was a hard decision because I love him so much but I can't be selfish and have to think of his quality of life.

He has been a trooper through all of this. We have had almost 6 months from the surgery that he most likely would not have had. Most of that time he had good quality of life. He never had side effects from the chemo until just recently with the weakness. He ate good throughout and was playful.

Thanks for this very wonderful website and I wish everyone to have as long as they can of a good life with their fur babies.