Ace’s Cancer Is Back

You'd never know Ace the therapy dog has cancer.

When Ace was diagnosed with canine lymphoma last July, we knew we would only have about a year left with him, regardless of what we did to attack the cancer. We committed to chemotherapy and Ace responded beautifully. He had few side effects and achieved remission immediately. He’s still a therapy dog at the hospital and you’d never know he has cancer.

His chemotherapy treatments started out weekly then tapered to every two weeks, then last time we got the good news that we could wait three weeks until the next go round. Unfortunately, after just a week Ace started behaving differently. He lost interest in his food and flat out refused to drink from his bowl, preferring instead to lick the snow for up to an hour. He woke in the middle of the night a couple of times, something this lazy boy never does.

My daily palpations of his lymph nodes made me suspicious. Are they getting bigger again or am I just a paranoid, hypochondriac dog mama? I’d hoped for the latter. I took him in this morning and our fantastic vet felt the same lymph nodes and confirmed my fear. Seven months later, the cancer is back.

I never thought we’d start up the chemo again, but we’re back to square one, trying a full-court-press, chemo-and-Prednisone combo. His quality of life is the major factor in our decision process, and he’s still 90% “the same ol’ Acey.” Most dogs tolerate chemo far better than humans do.

The prognosis is a big question mark. We are hopeful that he’ll respond immediately, just like last time, with few side effects. In that scenario we’d get another quick remission and more happy months with our boy. It’s also possible that the cancer is different this time — bigger, stronger and drug resistent. In the worst-case scenario, the strong meds could be too much for Ace and his system would crash. We should know in the next couple of weeks how he’s responding.

We feel fortunate that chemo was an option for us and we know we’d have lost him months ago without it. We’ve made the most of this time and have no regrets, and begging for more makes me feel selfish. Two of my friends have small children affected by cancer, so this is a hangnail by comparison.

We’re very grateful for your good vibes and well wishes. It really, really helps.

Dost Thou Complain Too Much?

Sweet-Faced Boy

It seems that the longest, snowiest winter in history just won’t leave, and almost everybody’s complaining about it. I’m a culprit too. I try to pick one season to gripe about because you can’t have it both ways, and this is it. It’s easy to moan when you’re updating your Facebook status from the warmth of your kitchen, but a recent patient visit adjusted my attitude a bit.

 

Walking into a patient’s room with an 80-pound dog can feel a bit like walking into church with your skirt tucked into your pantyhose – awkward! When I saw that a patient was reading the hospital’s menu for the day, I made an oh-so-clever, ice-breaking quip about ordering the surf-n-turf. He smiled and said, “It’s just so nice to have hot food three times a day!”

Here he was in the hospital, feeling crappy, in a situation that I’d say totally warrants whining and complaining, but he was grateful to be there. He had a warm bed and healthy food and people taking care of him. He was glad Ace visited and he thanked me for bringing him by.

Now I’m keeping him in mind when I dole out the whining. It’s a good example of how much we gain from meeting the patients, staff and families when we volunteer.