Beautifulriver

Thank you for all the kind words and advice. Annie is still here, going for and enjoying slow, short walks and doing lots of sniffing. And she's eating, but not nearly enough. She now has ascites, which is apparently a complication of kidney failure/proteinuria. She's taking various drugs to combat her problems, but I'm not sure they are helping. I'm monitoring her closely, and I think we're very close to pts. I am utterly heartbroken. I did have a brief email exchange with Dr Couto, who said that lymphoma was treatable if caught early enough. (He was very responsive and kind - impressed!) But really, we missed that window of opportunity between September, when her blood tests showed kidney issues, and April, when she was diagnosed, to treat the cancer and kidney disease. It was too late to help her by the time I knew she was sick. The vet I'm with now has been terrific. The one I left will feel my wrath once Annie is gone.

Results just in. Annie has cancer - lymphoma and possibly tumours in her kidneys. If the vet had told me that her creatinine levels were raised in September, I would have asked him to investigate further and no doubt we would have found she had CKD and cancer. I would have said no to the dental and focused on treating the CKD and cancer. Annie wouldn't have been through all she has re the dental, and we would have had time to treat the diseases, to give her more time. I would have had months rather than days to say goodbye to her too. This is the second time this veterinary practice has missed cancer in one of my greyhounds. It won't happen again.

Thanks. I've moved to a new veterinary practice, which I feel is doing a good job of caring for Annie, who is fading and will not be with me much longer. However, I will contact Dr Couto at some point in the hope I can get an opinion. In Annie's notes, it says she had a pre-op creatinine level of 135 that was 'likely pre renal' and should have another blood test in 1-3 months. No-one mentioned this to me and indeed when I took her in for the second half of the dental 4 months later, the vet (the same one who wrote her notes in Sept) told me there was no need for more bloodwork as her previous test results were all normal. I'm beating myself up that I didn't say go ahead and test anyway. They then proceeded to do a long dental, not following the anaesthesia/drug guidelines set out for dogs with CKD. I would not have allowed them to proceed at all if I'd know. She had crappy teeth before the dental, but she was a cheeky, happy little girl. She's fading and toothless now. I'm angry and distraught.

I just posted about another black nine year old greyhound I'm about to lose due to kidney disease. And I came back here to read my post about Roisin from 2+ years ago. Thanks for all the hugs everyone. I'll be needing some more soon.

Annie is nine years and nine months old. She had a lengthy dental a month ago, with several extractions, and her pre-op bloodwork was 135 umol/L (1.6) creatinine. Afterwards she was drinking and peeing more than usual for a few days. I called the vet, and they suggested I give her a few days to settle after the op. Things did get better and settle for a while. She was a bit off her food sometimes (she's always been a fussy eater), still drinking a little more than usual, but she seemed to be getting back to normal - loving her walks, being her usual lovely little self. Then last week, she really went off her food, seemed quite lethargic, lost a couple of lbs very quickly (she's only 48 lbs at most), so I got her into the vet. Her creatinine is now 1,002 umol/L (11+), BUN level is 34.2, SDMA 82. The vet says he's never seen anything like it. He was pretty much clear that this is the end game and that there's nothing we can do to get the levels down. But we agreed on fluids for 48 hours, an ultra sound, urine test for infection. She's at the vet now, having a spa day or two (I told her ). It looks like kidney failure, but she doesn't seem as ill as she should be for that creatinine level. I'm wondering if the anaesthetic suddenly made an underlying problem dramatically worse. Very worried. Any ideas anyone? I've lost five dogs, three of them greyhounds, since November 2020 and just desperate not to lose my sugar and spice girly!

Thank you. Losing two of them so close together is hard. But he had 7 years on this earth more than her, so I'm taking her loss worse. She leaves me with some fantastic memories though.... She was unusual in that she sat, in a very uncomfortable way, sometimes in the weirdest of places. I took her and two of the other dogs to a field last winter when it had snowed. She ran to the middle and just sat there. I had to move her on eventually as I was afraid she'd get frost bite in her bottom. She used to fly, all legs in the air, elevated several feet, from one side of the kitchen to the other, when she was excited and was running outside. She could do a jig. Sometimes when we were out walking, if I scratched her back just high of her tail, she would swish her bottom from side to side as she trotted on. My dad died recently too, and at his funeral someone commented that he had big shoes (metophorically!). My girl had them too. Such a quirky, feisty girl. She'll always be sorely missed.

I don't want to alarm you, but please read my posts. I hope your girl is luckier than mine was.

The day after writing the above post, my girl developed an infection in her other front leg, so I delayed the chemo tablet and got her on antibiotics. The infection had apparently cleared up 3 days later, but she had gone off her food, so I couldn't get the rest of the course into her. I was also struggling to get pain meds into her as she was eating infrequently and little, no matter what I offered her. I did manage to syringe some meds into her, but she wasn't happy about that and bit me a couple of times. She would always have done that though; she wasn't ever the most co-operative greyhound! We were clearly now careering towards the end, so the idea of chemo went right out the window. Two days later, she lost the use of one of her back legs, meaning she had only one really good leg left! I took her to the vets that evening. They gave her a sedative before she went in as she hated the vets and would have raged against being pts, and I didn't want her to be angry as she left this world. She died in my arms, and I was able to hold her, kiss her lovely tummy, in a way that I never had in her life! She was a feisty, independent Irish beauty, and I am missing her desperately. From the first sign of a limp to losing her, it was less than a month. The vets have told me though that as the cancer was disseminated, it would already have spread in her body when she started limping, when the first signs of it became clear. I had no chance to stop this. With hindsight, there were signs, but not ones that jumped out at me and said CANCER! Her behaviour changed, though not significantly. She became more sociable and affectionate, and she stopped trying to steal the other dogs' food. I just thought she was finally mellowing in her old age. And she was still eating well. She had lost some weight, but it seemed to leave her in not so obvious a way; her ribs were not protruding at all, more a loss of muscle tone. I just read up on cachexia, which seems to fit the bill..... and means by the time she was losing weight, the cancer was advanced and there was no going back. She was also still loving her walks, still pestering one of my other dogs (the one who died of pancreatitis recently) when she got excited as we got ready for walks. Such a mixed picture. If I had taken her to my vet a few weeks earlier and said she'd lost a couple of pounds and was being sweeter, would he have run any tests that might have shown she had cancer, could we have identified the cancer earlier, and if we had, could we have stopped it advancing? Clearly, I'll never know, but from now on, I will treat every limp that doesn't clear up in a couple of days as cancer and ALL changes in behaviour, not just the unwelcome ones, as an indication of ill health.

Thanks for the hugs! Very much needed right now! The oncologist I'm seeing trained with Dr Couto and has 40 years experience in the area. I trust his advice, especially as he's met and assessed her. He has said her blood is good enough to proceed, and we're starting on a low dose to see how she tolerates it. My own vet also told me the only time he's seen this drug used the dog had no side effects. So, I'm going ahead cautiously. She's back home now, clearly relieved to be here. She hates the vets and is not a co-operative patient. Her pain is under control... for now. I'm taking her somewhere new and special every day that she's healthy. Whatever the effects of the chemo, we don't have long, so we need to pack a lot of living in. I'd still really like to hear if anyone's had experience of this drug and/or this type of cancer, which is not common in greyhounds.

My beautiful nine year old Irish greyhound girl has just been diagnosed with disseminated histiocytic sarcoma. The first sign of this was a mild limp about 3 weeks ago. I rested her for a couple of days and gave her pain meds, thinking she'd just pulled something, and then she was fine for a few days, even going on her usual one hour walk with no limp whatsoever. A few days later, it came back, and as I could also see she'd lost some weight too I began fearing cancer. I got her to the vet, who x rayed her leg and said she had osteoarthritis. I called two days later, expressing doubt and asking for a referral. She had a CT scan, aspirates and biopsies 6 days ago at a specialist centre, and today I was told she has disseminated histiocytic sarcoma, which means the cancer grew in various parts of her body (lungs, kidneys, lymph nodes, shoulder.... that we know of) at the same time. So basically, she's riddled with it and, the oncologist says, would have been by the time she started limping. I had no chance to stop this. She's still limping, but is on pain meds and seems to be coping okay. The disease progresses rapidly, so with pain meds alone, I am sure she'll be gone in weeks or even days. Both surgery and radiation are inappropriate due to the cancer having metastasised. The only option seems to be chemo, specifically a drug called Lomustine (CCNU). I have agreed to this, but I'm reading the potential side effects and mean survival times, and having second thoughts. In an article by Dr Couto et al 'CCNU for the treatment of dogs with histiocytic sarcoma', the results are: "Treatment with CCNU at 60 to 90 mg/m2 resulted in an overall response rate of 46% in 56 dogs with gross measurable disease. 3 dogs with minimal residual disease experienced tumor relapse but lived 433 days or more after starting CCNU. The median survival of all 59 dogs was 106 days. Thrombocytopenia (< 100,000 platelets/microL) and hypoalbuminemia were found to be negatively associated with prognosis and were predictive of < 1 month survival." Not great odds! I'm asking what her platelet / blood protein count is tomorrow. If they are low, I am, I think, with great sadness, retracting my permission as the outcome looks very poor. If anyone has any experience of this type of cancer or advice, I'd like to hear it. I lost a 16 year old dog to pancreatitis last night. He and my Irish girl both started showing signs of illness at the same time. I'm not ready to lose her so soon after him, but I'm afraid I will. Totally gutted by this.