Editor's note: This post follows WLRN's Kelley Mitchell's experience of taking her dog to the animal oncologist. Read the first post, When Cancer Comes Calling: The Canine Kind.
Oscar, my 9-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi, loves to go to the vet. His Corgi brother Felix not so much.
Oscar thinks it’s all a big social event that involves much hugging and petting by the doctors and nurses and it’s just a bonus if there’s another cold, wet nose to rub while he’s in the waiting room.
This could only be improved upon, should there be a rousing game of fetch with a tennis ball, although there never is. It is the vet after all.
But this morning at the new clinic, when he bounded in for his first cancer treatments (as I knew he would,) I had to think he might not emerge so enthusiastically.
I thought right.
Oscar was a little groggy from the light anesthesia used to keep him motionless for radiation. Nobody wants to zap the good cells. However, I’m not sure he’s yet to feel the effects of the first dose of Vinblastine chemotherapy.
The animal oncologist who took over treatment from the regular vet, who removed the mast cell tumor from Oscar’s left leg, seems to think the cancer is still early enough to warrant a noble fight.
And, if he thinks so, that’s good enough for me for right now. Remind me I said this when I am driving from Dade to Broward at 6:30 a.m. every day for the next four weeks.
The radiation is daily -- the chemo will be weekly, for perhaps eight weeks.
It’s ironic how he will go through virtually the same course of treatment as I did for breast cancer in 2002.
Two rounds of chemo and accompanying steroids, radiation and surgery. And wouldn’t you know, he’ll get his chemo on Monday, just like me. What concerns me? I knew why I felt fairly lousy; he won’t.
“Oscar,” I told him this morning. “Around Thursday, you should start to feel a little more normal, just in time for the weekend – which is a nice thing to have happen. And then Monday, once again, you won’t."
Oscar gets to keep his hair during this type of chemotherapy. I didn’t. Which is good, because, while I am willing to try adding some years to his lease on life, I have to draw the line at buying him a doggie fur suit. That’s just wrong.
Good luck, Love Bucket, we’re all pulling for you. Mom.
