VallejoSheltie
Forums Enthusiast
After 14 years and 10 months, my best furry friend for a quarter of my life has passed.
Boots started to have a severe limp w/his right front leg, which resulted in a rehab plan and minor gabapetin increase.
This worked great and almost eliminated limping, and he still would chase deer out of the backyard, etc.
But it was still uncomfortable enough to lie in the down position normally, so he would flop on his side for most of the day.
Difficult to get up on his own unless resting against a wall or sofa.
Vet suggested we add amantadine for cns desensitization along with his daily meloxicam, gabapentin and trilstane for cushings.
After a couple months of this, his lethargy had increased and whereas he previously had needed just a touch on the back to be able to flip onto his feet and rise, he now needed a little more assistance.
I ended up asking for a complete blood/lipid panel, assuming being older, on 3 pain meds (NSAIDS) and my raw feeding might have resulted in damage to his kidney/liver causing lower metabolic clearance and thus spiraling build-up of meds in his system causing the lethargy.
Test results came back great, except for ALP 997 (Cushings) vs 344 a year before.
So couple days later pushed for an ACTH Stim test, and they did the now standard resting cortisol, which came back 4.8 which is great as it show cushings is still being well controlled.
Boots breathing and water intake had increased after starting rehab, which had only become more and more apparent.
A little frustrated with the rehab vet for feeling like I was having to drive the inquiry into why he was having these symptoms, so I took him back to his OG vet.
OG Vet listened to my tale, and request for an ultrasound to check the liver for benign nodules and gallbladder for mucucelle to figure out the high ALP.
That would require fasting and pre-med the next day, and he asked if Boots had a recent xray.
No, so he took a couple.
Xrays showed a golf ball sized or larger tumor in his lower right lung lobe.
So for several months we'd been treating him for musco-skeletal pain with escalating pain meds while the real problem was decreased lung function causing lower O2 and ATP/energy production, and increased lethargy....
The only silver lining I could gather at this time is that he was on what appears to be the gold standard multi-access pain relief protocol for cancer patients.
Meloxicam for primary pain, gabapentine for pain signaling attenuation, and amantadine for 'wind-up' pain/CNS desensitization.
So he was likely very tired and weak, but still had a strong spark of life to chase deer, bark at me feeding the fish in the pond, and very hungry/thirsty.
So picked up my wife at the airport from visiting family, and later that day we got the diag.
She noticed pretty quick that he was 'worse' now than when she'd left a week before where we'd all walked in the backyard together.
We agreed that spending 22 hours a day on your side, not having enough energy to get up and often not able to without help was simply not quality.
Since we let him go, its been rather hard as logically I know it was a weird coincidence of events.
I know I was given an opportunity of 15 years that many could only dream of having.
And cancer at 15? Not actually a surprise, unless you've been fooling yourself for years that you friend is a super healthy senior that dodged cancer 2 years ago and blithely assumed it would never come again.
Its still surprising how this is worse in some ways than losing a parent, which sort of adds on even more guilt.
If you read this far, I appreciate your carthatic support.
Boots started to have a severe limp w/his right front leg, which resulted in a rehab plan and minor gabapetin increase.
This worked great and almost eliminated limping, and he still would chase deer out of the backyard, etc.
But it was still uncomfortable enough to lie in the down position normally, so he would flop on his side for most of the day.
Difficult to get up on his own unless resting against a wall or sofa.
Vet suggested we add amantadine for cns desensitization along with his daily meloxicam, gabapentin and trilstane for cushings.
After a couple months of this, his lethargy had increased and whereas he previously had needed just a touch on the back to be able to flip onto his feet and rise, he now needed a little more assistance.
I ended up asking for a complete blood/lipid panel, assuming being older, on 3 pain meds (NSAIDS) and my raw feeding might have resulted in damage to his kidney/liver causing lower metabolic clearance and thus spiraling build-up of meds in his system causing the lethargy.
Test results came back great, except for ALP 997 (Cushings) vs 344 a year before.
So couple days later pushed for an ACTH Stim test, and they did the now standard resting cortisol, which came back 4.8 which is great as it show cushings is still being well controlled.
Boots breathing and water intake had increased after starting rehab, which had only become more and more apparent.
A little frustrated with the rehab vet for feeling like I was having to drive the inquiry into why he was having these symptoms, so I took him back to his OG vet.
OG Vet listened to my tale, and request for an ultrasound to check the liver for benign nodules and gallbladder for mucucelle to figure out the high ALP.
That would require fasting and pre-med the next day, and he asked if Boots had a recent xray.
No, so he took a couple.
Xrays showed a golf ball sized or larger tumor in his lower right lung lobe.
So for several months we'd been treating him for musco-skeletal pain with escalating pain meds while the real problem was decreased lung function causing lower O2 and ATP/energy production, and increased lethargy....
The only silver lining I could gather at this time is that he was on what appears to be the gold standard multi-access pain relief protocol for cancer patients.
Meloxicam for primary pain, gabapentine for pain signaling attenuation, and amantadine for 'wind-up' pain/CNS desensitization.
So he was likely very tired and weak, but still had a strong spark of life to chase deer, bark at me feeding the fish in the pond, and very hungry/thirsty.
So picked up my wife at the airport from visiting family, and later that day we got the diag.
She noticed pretty quick that he was 'worse' now than when she'd left a week before where we'd all walked in the backyard together.
We agreed that spending 22 hours a day on your side, not having enough energy to get up and often not able to without help was simply not quality.
Since we let him go, its been rather hard as logically I know it was a weird coincidence of events.
I know I was given an opportunity of 15 years that many could only dream of having.
And cancer at 15? Not actually a surprise, unless you've been fooling yourself for years that you friend is a super healthy senior that dodged cancer 2 years ago and blithely assumed it would never come again.
Its still surprising how this is worse in some ways than losing a parent, which sort of adds on even more guilt.
If you read this far, I appreciate your carthatic support.
