Sunny's progress - cancer treatment

Today we did our 3-week visit to the vet. Sunny is on a holistic diet along with chemotherapy (Adriamycin drip at the vet once every 3 weeks and Cytoxan pill every 3 days). When we first brought her in, she had a few small bumps and the good news was that none grew and one shrunk just a bit.

Her energy level remains very high and her blood results came back better than expected. The vet had expected the blood count to cut to about half and it went down, but not nearly by half. Sunny is a bit tired, which happens after each treatment. Also happens when I give her the Cytoxan pills every 3rd day. The day after she gets it and the next day, she typically does really well.

She used to get standard kibble food every morning and we have switched to 2 meals a day and primarily give her chicken or beef as the primary ingredient along with herbs and supplements. Will share her diet if someone wants.

Saw the movie Crash on Sunday - holy shit was it good

Go see it. Really heavy flick with about every racial stereotype you could imagine. It's the type of movie you can't even contemplate what happens next in. Really builds tension well.

Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Frasier, Ludicris (yes my spelling sucks) and some other great folks in this flick.

Check out the website: http://www.crashfilm.com/

Another day another way

Shot an 85 on the course and lost a number of skins. I'm on and off like Anna Nicole Smith with a bottle and a cheeseburger.

My dog sunny and her cancer

Our 8 year old Sunny (whippet/pit bull mix) collapsed recently. She was brought to the vet and her white blood cell count was really low. They brought her vitals back, but an ultrasound showed that she had a ruptured spleen. We also did an ultrasound on the heart and it showed no tumors so we went ahead and had her spleen removed (this cost us many $thousands). Unfortunately, the tests came back positive for cancer - and the worst kind. It was hemangiosarcoma. This is terminal and at the blood level. Always spreads and typical survival rate is just 2-3 months.

After reading a lot on the net we had decided to take a holistic path to improving and hopefully lengthening her life. There was a lot of online controversy over chemotherapy. We took Sunny to an oncologist in Santa Cruz, who provided much needed education -- that the average was in fact 2-3 months of survival without treatment and 8-10 months with. Additionally, side effects range from little to severe (usually breed specific). He even said he had several dogs that are living well over a year now and one that is around 5 years -- this gave us at least some hope. Our primary concern of course was not reducing the quality of our dog's life and of course not be selfish.

I decided to also visit a holistic vet, who suprisingly was in favor of a combined treatment therapy. So, she gave us advice on a new diet for Sunny along with some supplements (can provide this info is you request).

We began treatment in early June.