Answering an Easy Question

I never got around to posting an update from Ella's last radiation appointment. Her tumor has shrunk another 10%! That makes a 30% total shrinkage. She is breathing much easier now. However, we still do not know what kind of cancer it is. The dye test came back inconclusive, so they think a mistake was made. I'm a little frustrated that we don't have results, simply because she only has one more radiation treatment left and I want to know what we need to do for her after that's done. The not knowing part is very hard, but I'm trying to be patient.

I wanted to discuss another topic, too. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been tentatively asked by a few people why we’re trying to save Ella. If it’s costing us so much money, heartache, and stress, why do it? She’s a dog, after all. The questions are tough to hear, but the answer comes easily for us. I figured I’d try to explain why we’re choosing to invest in making Ella well again.

Ella is like our child (Oz, too). We don’t have human children and our pets have become our kids. Just like you would do anything to make your child well again, we’re doing anything we can to make Ella well again. To us, her life is just as valuable as a human child’s. Ella has become an important part of our family, not just a dog we can easily replace. She’s special to us.

Before we adopted, her she had a very hard life. I’ll post her adoption story here one day, but just believe me when I say the poor girl has faced a lot of cruelty at the hands of humans. She doesn’t care though. Yes, she gets scared in certain situations, but for the most part, this little girl is extremely trusting and loving. If you’ve ever met Ella, you know she greets with slobbery kisses, a big smile, and a wagging rear end.

She’s brought so much joy into our lives. After a long day, we can come home and know she’ll be waiting at the door for us. We can lay on the floor and play or snuggle with her and forget about whatever bothered us that day. I started training her early into her time with us and she can do a laundry list of tricks now. She’s extremely intelligent and intuitive. She knows if one of us isn’t feeling well and does her best to cheer us up all on her own. She does so much for us and in return all she wants is to be loved and cared for. We’re happy to oblige.

The gist of it is: we love her. A lot. Is her care costing us a lot? Oh, you bet. Is this painful to go through? You have no idea. Don’t I hate leaving her at the hospital for radiation? I cry every time, but also know she’s in good hands. Doesn’t this put a strain on us? Isn’t it stressful? Yes and yes, but two years ago we rescued her to give her a better life and now we’re trying to do that again. Six years isn’t long enough for her sweet self to have been on this earth. She deserves many more happy years and we’ll fight to give them to her.

The Good, the Weird, and the Unknown

I'm currently exhausted beyond belief, so apologies if there are parts of this that make zero sense. I woke up at 4am to take Ella to Gainesville for her second radiation treatment today since we had to be there at 7:30am. We only just got home at 7pm, too. I wanted to post something though because I know some were waiting for an update on our visit today.

So, here's the...

GOOD: Ella's tumor has already shrunk by 20%! We thought something was up because she has been acting more like herself over the past few days. She hasn't been struggling to breathe as often either. However, since she was on steroids for inflammation, we didn't know if it was the drugs or possible shrinkage that was responsible. Ella is feeling better and that's a major hurdle jumped right now. Hopefully it will continue to shrink after each radiation treatment.

WEIRD: We also got the results from the biopsy she had taken last Thursday. (The UF team sent a large portion of the biopsy to a lab for testing and kept some of it for their own examination.) It turns out Ella does not have histiocytic sarcoma after all. Hooray? We're not sure. This afternoon/evening the pathology department is doing a dye test on some of their tissue samples from the biopsy. They believe now that it is a round cell tumor and could be one of three different kinds. At this point, I'm taking it all with a grain of salt because whatever it is, it's weird. The dye test results will come back tonight and I should get a phone call about them tomorrow.

UNKNOWN: A lot is unknown right now until we figure out what the cancer is. Each of the three different possibilities has a different prognosis, treatment, etc. It's also unknown is knowing the type of cancer will matter since it is presenting in such a strange manner. It seems like anything could happen now, which is nerve wracking, to say the least. I just want to know! Unfortunately, science and medicine don't always work that way. I've seen two rainbows this week - maybe that means something good. Or maybe it means it's been raining a lot. Hm.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll receive some good news. The tumor shrinkage was great news, so maybe there will be a snowball effect here. I'm glad our baby girl is feeling a bit better. Right now, that's what matters most.

Discovering the Cancer, Part 3

You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

The next morning, we received a positive update about Ella's overnight stay and asked if we could come see her again. We've always been afraid of her thinking we were going to abandon her, since that's what her first family did. She was happy to see us and we were happy to see her. Ella had her biopsy, ultrasound, and radiation for the early afternoon, so we had a bit of waiting to do. Around 5pm, Dr. Talbot was ready for us with more results. The biopsy had been a success. They'd gotten a large sample and were sending it to the lab for examination. They'd been able to get enough to put onto their own slides for their pathology unit to analyze too. After looking at them, they were almost 100% positive Ella had the histiocytic sarcoma they had told us about. However, the ultrasound had brought good news, the sarcoma had not spread, making it localized and possible to do radiation after all.

They confessed everyone was uncertain about what would happen because Ella's cancer was not present in most places histiocytic sarcoma normally appeares in dogs. It was not affecting any of her organs, but rather just sitting in her chest cavity among them. Surgery was still not an option, but Dr. Talbot seemed hopeful that radiation would do something. The best case scenario would be radiating, seeing shrinkage, and maintaining it with chemotherapy, which dogs respond very well to and normally have minimal side effects from. Either way, we knew our dog had cancer for sure and the outcome was unknown, which is scary.

Dr. Talbot suggested we do three more radiation treatments over the next three weeks since Ella had woken up from her first treatment and seemed to be doing well. We agreed and went to visit her again. She stayed once more overnight to be certain there would be no radiation side effects, but we got to return the next morning to bring her home. By 11am, we'd signed all the paperwork, scheduled her next treatments, and were in the car driving home.

It was obviously not over, but just getting to take her home seemed like an achievement. Ella is stable and doing pretty well. We're doing our best to keep her calm so she doesn't have labored breathing anymore. The first two days she slept a lot, but today she has been more herself. She's started talking to us again and we even gently played with a favorite toy tonight. She gets worn out easily, but that's ok. If I had cancer and had spent three days in a hospital, I imagine I'd still be pretty tired too. I'm feeling anxious about leaving her here during the day while we go back to work, but I think she'll be alright. She's a fighter and we're fight for her too.

Discovering the Cancer, Part 2

If you haven't yet, you can read part 1 here.

We arrived in Gainesville at 3:30am. The Small Animal Hospital's emergency room was been expecting us and had a kennel ready for Ella. We handed over the x-rays and forms from the emergency vet for the on-call doctor (Dr. Koontz) to review. Ella needed a CT scan, but we'd have to wait until morning to do it since the scan isn't available so late at night. In the meantime, they would take blood and urine samples from Ella and monitor her overnight. When we took her to the intensive care unit where her kennel was, she caught on that we'd be leaving her there and got frightened. It broke my heart to see her so confused and scared.

By the time we left it was 5am. There was no point in checking into a hotel room since the hospital opened at 8am, so we slept in our car in their parking lot. Or tried to, at least. At 8am, we got a call from the ER saying they'd been able to collect the samples they needed and had transferred her to the Oncology unit. Later that morning, Ella was cleared for anesthesia and had a CT scan and biopsy of the tumor done. The hours passed so slowly. When the CT scan was completed and Ella woke up from her anesthesia the Chief of Oncology, Dr. Bacon, came to talk with us. He was honest with us, which I always appreciate, but it was hard hearing what he had to say.

At this point Ella more than likely had thymoma or lymphoma. Thymoma can be treated with surgery or radiation and Lymphoma can be treated with just drugs (chemotherapy). However, Ella's tumor was so large and appeared to encompass the arteries leading to her heart, so surgery was not an option. Dr. Bacon said they would more than likely not be able to get all of the tumor because of it's placement and surgery would be very risky in the first place. Lymphoma was our best hope because it responded very well to chemo and would pretty much melt away. Unfortunately, we could tell they were leaning in the direction of thymoma. We were still waiting on the results of the biopsy though and those would confirm what the tumor was.

Around 5:30pm, the biopsy came back. Dr. Talbot had been assigned to Ella and came to give us the news with Michael Liu, a graduate veterinary student. (UF is a teaching hospital.) They didn't think it was thymoma or lymphoma. Instead, they were most certain Ella had a rare type of cancer in dogs called localized histiocytic sarcoma. In order to fully diagnose her with this, they would have to take a larger biopsy and send it to a lab for examination. We consented for her to have this done first thing in the morning, along with an abdominal ultrasound to make sure the cancer had not spread. Dr. Talbot also proposed giving Ella a radiation treatment to try shrinking the tumor. Since we had nothing to lose really, we told them to do it. She stayed overnight again for monitoring, but we got to see her before we left. It was the happiest 15 minutes in the last two days for us.

Discovering the Cancer, Part 1

Just one month ago, Ella was a normal dog to us. Well, maybe not normal. We think Ella's pretty special and everyone that meets her falls in love. She's the sweetest dog I've ever met and she’s never met someone she didn't like. She loves unconditionally.

A few weeks ago we started noticing Ella was developing a gagging cough, sort of like she had a hairball or was trying to throw up. Nothing ever came up though and we just assumed she had some sort of upper respiratory issue. Along with the gagging came grunting. Ella's always been a vocal dog – she "talks" to us regularly. We thought this was just another way of her communicating.

Our cat had an appointment at the veterinarian's office for a check-up, so I had Ella added on to the appointment. The vet listened to her lungs and heart and gave her an exam. Her lungs sounded clear, but we started her on an antibiotic as a first step. That night I gave her her first pill.

Just as we were headed to bed, Ella began coughing and gagging rather violently. I got up to try calming her down. Just as I reached her, she fell from a standing position to lying on her side and started convulsing. She was having a seizure. I screamed for Grant, but when I turned back around she was sitting up like nothing had happened. We noticed she had lost control of her bladder though and was breathing heavily. I talked to her soothingly and rubbed her ears for a few minutes, but she continued to struggle. We made the decision to take her to the emergency vet, which is thankfully a block from our house.

The emergency veterinarian also didn't hear anything in her lungs, but said her heart sounds were coming from a place further away than they should have been. He took an x-ray and discovered Ella's true condition. There, lying between her lungs and heart, was a tumor the size of a softball. The tumor was pressing on her windpipe, which was causing the gagging. The vet told us we needed to get her help as soon as possible, since the exact conditions were unknown and she continued to struggle to breathe. He suggested a few locations, but when he mentioned the University of Florida's Veterinary Hospital, I started nodding. I told Grant we should go there because Dolly's Foundation, a Central Florida pit bull rescue organization, has starting saving puppies with swimmer puppy syndrome by taking them there for treatment and therapy.

We brought Ella home, packed a bag, and left for Gainesville at 1:30am.