Wed., Dec 1, 2010 - We are still fighting!

We had our appointment with Dr. Ogilvie Monday in Carlsbad, CA.  It went well, and Hardee had some tests run.  His bloodwork came back normal, for the most part, and the good news is that he is no longer neutropenic so I can take him off the antibiotics.  HH is still dehydrated from his chemo reaction, but we are working on that.  He had chest radiographs done to see if the cancer had spread to his lungs, and it had not....YAY!...a bright side!

Dr O said that this cancer CANNOT be cured and wanted to make sure that I understood that.  What we are focusing on now is quality of life, and if we can, controlling the tumor growth that is on a rampage.  Nasal chondrosarcomas are slow to respond to therapy, and Hardee's seems really resistant to everything we have tried so far.  Dr O doesn't agree that chemo should work within a week like what Dr V told me, and he doesn't want to CT again until we've done 2 rounds of chemo.  Dr O thinks there are still some grenades that haven't been tried yet with Hardee that we can still lob at this tumor.

A surgeon came in to talk to me about debulking the tumor.  If we got rid of as much as we can of the tumor, the chemo drugs might be more effective.  The tumor would always regrow though because we can't surgically get all the tumor because of it's position.  Hardee would be very disfigured, and it is a very hard surgery on dogs with a long recuperation time.  They cut through the bones of his face and actually remove quite a bit of structure.  I don't want to do that to Hardee and have some of his last days be about trying to recuperate.  I asked the surgeon if he would do this surgery on his dog before he would do chemo, and he said No, that he would just do the chemo.  That sealed my decision for no surgery.

The current plan now is to try to control the tumor growth with chemo and metronomic therapy.  I haven't had time to research metronomic therapy just yet, but it is a molecular therapeutic.  The drugs will be compounded for me by a pharmacy in Arizona and sent to the house.  I have to wear gloves to handle it, and Hardee gets it daily.  Next week we go for chemo again, but this round of chemo will be carboplatin, which is supposed to be easier on him.  We might add in some more tumor suppression drugs later.

They also gave me an option to help control the bleeding from the nose, though currently we are having a good couple days of not much blood.  The option to control bleeding is to surgically tie off the carotid arteries.  That worried me immediately about how his brain, head, & face area would perfuse.  He assured me that dog anatomy is different from human and that it would not affect blood supply to the head structure.  I don't think we will consider that option, but we'll just have to see how this all plays out.

While we were at the agility trial this past weekend, there was an animal communicator there named Joy.  We paid for a session, and I want to believe what she told us.  There are things that I wanted to know.  Here's some of the answers that she gave us.  Yes, Hardee knows he is dying, and he has some anger over that.  He thought he would be here another 10 years.  He loves his life and fell in love with us when he first met us.  Yes, he knows how much we love him and worries about us when he is gone.  Yes, he wants to continue running agility for as long as his Dad will run him.  He loves it, he says.  He doesn't love the obedience and rally that I do with him, but I already knew that.  I had Joy tell him that it was important to me and that if he would finish his RAE and CDX titles, I'd never make him do any more rally or obedience again. 

The first thing that Hardee asked Joy when the session started was could he come back?  He kept asking it she said because he enjoys his life so much.  I had Joy tell him to do what he could to come back to us.  Joy said that there was a reddish brown dog with a black mask who has come to guide him to the bridge.  That would be my Cessna, my Rhodesian Ridgeback.  Joy said she only sees the ones who come to guide the dying when their time to go is getting closer.  We are still fighting though because Hardee said that he still wanted to fight.  My Cessie was a patient girl, and she'll just have to wait for later to guide Hardee.

Hardee and I are in long Beach currently, competing in rally and obedience.  So far, Hardee is doing great!  We qualified and placed in all of our runs today.  We got Hardee's 7th RAE leg and his 1st Open A obedience leg towards his CDX.  We even placed 2nd, and also got the high scoring PWD in obedience award.  Two more days to go, and I hope Hardee will continue to feel okay down here so we can get through this.  He's held up fantastically with no white blood cells last week, being on the road for almost a week so far, 3 days of agility over the weekend, oncologist appointment Monday where they stuck a big needle into his bladder, and took blood and chest radiographs, and now this 3 day trial.  My Handsome Hardee is indeed hardy!!

Today, it has been all about my joy and pride of qualifying with Hardee, and praising and treating him.  It always rolls back around to the most important thing, because it is always all about Hardee!!