Jump to content

Bevd

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    2,125

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Bevd

    Remember The Little Lump That Darcy Had Removed Last Week?

    in Health and Medical discussion

    Posted

    Some of you will remember that when Darcy had her xrays last week (22.5 months post diagnosis/amp, osteo) we also had a small lump removed. The lump was just above her stump and had been there for a couple of months (and had been checked numerous times but it didn't change and the vet wasn't concerned about it).

     

    Anyway, whilst she was under for the xrays, we had the lump removed and sent to the lab and I can report that it was.......

     

    benign :confetti

     

    Or, as I described it to some friends immediately after the call came, "a nothingy blob" :confetti

     

     

    We seem to be heading towards another very very important date on our calendar.... :ph34r

    Cosmo - Keepin' On Keepin' On.

    in Health and Medical discussion

    Posted

    Each day since Thursday Cosmo's been doing better than the day before. She can get up on her own and get up the stairs if we can't catch her first. She laid down and caught some sun in the yard on Sunday which she hadn't done in a while, I suppose because she knew if she did she wouldn't be able to get back up. The only thing that's really been missing is she's seemed somewhat mopey and I suppose I can't blame her for that. If I was reduced to either laying in bed or going to the doctor all the time I'd be mopey too.

     

    The vet said keeping her moving was good for her and we had some beautiful cool weather tonight so even though it was about 11:30 pm when we set out we decided to drive to the beach and take her for a short walk on the boardwalk. We really expected it to be very brief in fact, but thought she might enjoy the outing all the same. We just figured we'd let her lead the way and when she'd had enough she'd let us know. So we walked and walked and walked some more and frankly it was hard to keep pace with Cosmo, she was going so fast. After about a half mile or so we thought we had better turn around and shortly after we did Cosmo came to a stop, which she does from time to time when she gets tired. So we thought we had made the right call to turn back even though Cosmo had wanted to keep going. We'd walk a bit further and then she'd stop again so we thought she must be really tired. Then Jason said "let me try something" and he turned around, in the direction Cosmo had wanted to keep going and suddenly Cosmo was off at a jolly clip again. Turned out what we thought was fatigue was really just reluctance to head back to the car. We finally got her buy in when we told her we could just keep on going once we got to the car if that's what she wanted to do. And it was. All told I'd say Cosmo walked us about a mile, mile and a quarter or so.

     

    Now she's resting gently on her bed again, having polished off a cup of pudding with her night time meds mixed in it. And I can't be for sure, but I think I see a little smile on her face. And you should see the gigantic smile on mine.

     

    Add meeeeeeeeee to the giant smiling persons club :D

    An Update On Darcy

    in Health and Medical discussion

    Posted

    Have you wormed her lately? Just askin' ...

    Yep :D

     

    So, Bev, is there going to be a HUGE party in 1.5 more months?

    I couldn't possibly comment at this early stage :ph34r

     

    DARCY!!!!! DARCY!!!! DARCY!!!! Now you know you can't have a thread about sweet Darcy without some photos :digicam

    I shall try to remedy that ASAP :D

     

    Mine tend to drop a pound or two when summer hits so maybe that was it. They really don't exercise more than normal but I think it's just the heat.

    We don't have much heat. We are British :angry::lol

    An Update On Darcy

    in Health and Medical discussion

    Posted

    I've not said anything over the past few weeks because I wanted it to be very low key (don't know why - just felt more comfortable that way) but Darcy has been having a few blood tests because she's dropped some weight. It's not been a sudden weight loss but it has happened and we couldn't put it down to her eating less (that we're aware of) or more excercise (hardly :rolleyes::lol ).

     

    So she had a full blood work up including thyroid, blood smear etc and all was normal for her. The only quirk in the red blood count turns out to be 'normal' given that Darcy has some mild heart damage from her doxorubicin (chemo drug).

     

    So the next (final) thing really was to do chest x rays. It's been 6 months since she last had any and it's 22.5 months now since diagnosis/amp so....

     

    But everything is still as clear as it was 22.5 months ago :confetti

     

    Darcy is absolutely fine in herself and other than the weight loss (which isn't massive - it's been about 3kg since Feb) and she doesn't have any other symptoms of anything untoward, so we're just going to assume that she's been eating a bit less than she'd previously been and maybe throwing her toy once or twice more in a week than she normally does :rolleyes:

     

    The miracle continues :beatheart

    Cosmo - Keepin' On Keepin' On.

    in Health and Medical discussion

    Posted

    UPDATE, THURSDAY night, AUGUST 27

    First of all, Cosmo came home with us under her own steam (for the most part).

     

    Second of all, I feel like I have to tell you that if the vet really thought it was time, we would have done as she advised. We listened to the vet's suggestions and based on those, we got another xray and then a cbc to see if the lasix is having any adverse effects. She put Cosmo on 30mg of prednisone once a day for the next week, then 20 mg once a day the week after that. Dr. Matz conferred with an oncologist and another vet and based on what they said, thinks trying a different chemo drug may be in order. My first priority is and always has been quality of life, whereas Jason is more of the try anything type. Since we couldn't (because of Dr. Matz's schedule) do anything with chemo before next Tuesday at the soonest, I said let's try the prednisone for a few days and see how it goes. It also turns out we may have inadvertently made Cosmo worse by letting her lie around so much. She was actually getting around pretty well at the vet's office and again outside of it. And when we got home Jason walked her about three houses up and back which is more than she's felt like doing in days.

     

    I feel guilty in some way for taking you all on this ride with us so I hope you'll forgive me for putting you all through this too. I can really tell how much all of you care. I really didn't think Cosmo would be coming back home with us. Dr. Matz is being very frank with us that she doesn't think Cosmo has a whole lot more time, but she did think there was some quality to be had and based on that we decided to try another thing or two. Thank you so much for rooting for Cosmo so hard and standing by us at this difficult time.

     

    Tracey - I'm so sorry about this rollercoaster you're on. I'm very glad to hear that lovely Cosmo is still holding her own - and who knows, maybe a miracle will happen with the new drug/treament. But if it doesn't, I wish you many more happy times together for as long as is good for you all :grouphug

    Lame? Help!

    in Health and Medical discussion

    Posted

    You know - I don't even mess around any more. If it goes on for more than a day or so (and I know you mentione a week, on and off) I'd get the vet to look and unless he/she found something very obvious, I'd ask for x rays straight away. I'd much much rather rule out a very important thing (which can be a ticking time bomb) and then work out what the actual problem is, rather than rule other stuff out and find that we've lost vital days or weeks. If that makes sense.

     

    Hoping it's something very simple for Hannah :)

×
×
  • Create New...