Porter's Journey

Yes, we’ve made it!  Yesterday was Porter’s last chemotherapy treatment, and tomorrow is his four month ampuversary!  Needless to say we are very happy!  We celebrated by taking a trip to our property, making a nice campfire, and roasting ourselves a few hot dogs (Porter got one too, it was his celebratory junk food!).  We were very fortunate to have NONE of our chemo visits delayed, which I don’t think is too common.  I’m attributing that to one of his chinese herbal supplements from his acupuncturist – helped to support his blood during “the poisoning.”  And we were also very fortunate to have very few side effects.  All that was noticeable (and it wasn’t even that bad) was a slight loss of appetite the first 3-4 days after receiving his chemo.  And probably a little tiredness, but his energy is generally so good that it was really hard to notice.

So, what’s in store for our post-chemo life?  FUN!  We’re continuing to see the acupuncturist (who has also just finished up study in physical therapy, so she’s excited to show us some strength-building exercises).  Porter is also getting a massage visit about once a month – who doesn’t love a good rub down every now and then?!  I’m hoping to start working up his endurance once the drugs are gone – longer walks, and some strength training.  We’re continuing to do our pet therapy visits, and I’m hopeful that getting his endurance up will help him enjoy his visits a little more & not be quite so tired.  Porter will be staying on the home-cooked diet – we’re trying to stick to the Cancer Diet, with a couple of variations to accommodate Porter’s tastes.  And maybe a few camping trips this summer – and hopefully a trip to the ocean (Porter loves the beach & chasing sand dollars).  Mostly, I’m hoping our lives will return to a “new” normal.  Of course we’ll always be worried that the cancer will return, but all we can do is live our lives to the fullest & enjoy every day that we have together.

I’m also kind of hoping to get a tripawd gathering in my town?  Ever since Porter’s surgery, I have been noticing lots of other tripawds in the area.  Might be fun to get ’em together for a little fun every now and then!  I enjoy reading the Facebook posts about meetings and picnics in different cities, and that just seems like lots of fun.  With as friendly, welcoming, and informative as the people on this website have been, I’ve got to think it’s a common characteristic in this community!  I don’t get on to the website as often as I should, but I’m hoping to still post periodically – if for nothing else than to say “hi” and “we’re still around!”  Mostly, I’d like to give a huge THANK YOU to all the wonderful caring people on this website who have provided advice, guidance, tips, reassurance, experiences, laughs, …but most of all HOPE that our four legged kids can beat this terrible disease.  I love you all!

Sandy & Porter

Well, I’m finally back – after a three week vacation, it sure was good to get home to my boys.  And then I realized…three months!  That’s worthy of a new post!

While I was gone, Dad took over taking care of Porter.  Which meant making all his meals, giving him his supplements, taking him to his vet and acupuncturist appointments…a lot!  But he was successful.  Porter need a couple of medication refills, and it was Dad’s first time ever seeing acupuncture (no fainting, thankfully!).  Porter was a little mad at me when I got back, but within about 15 minutes he was acting happier to see me!

Overall, Porter has been doing great!  We had one setback, but it wasn’t a real setback.  We thought the vet told us only four chemo treatments, but we found out that was wrong, it was actually six treatments.  A miscommunication.  So we thought he was all done with chemo, but now he has two more treatments.  His fifth treatment is a week from today.  We’re hoping for continued success with the treatments, and for no side effects.  I really do think that the Gui Pi supplement is helping so much with his chemo tolerance.  He’s on 16 “pills” a day and I attribute that to his chemo success.  We’ve had to take him completely off the Honest Kitchen food – not because it wasn’t great, but because he stopped liking it.  I’m not sure why – maybe an off taste due to chemo, not sure.  Regardless, we’re on a 100% homemade diet.  I think I mentioned that before – he’s now getting 6 ounces of meat (beef, chicken, salmon, tuna) along with a varied combination of scrambled egg, spinach, cottage cheese, rice, and sweet potato.  Plus two to three raw bones per week for calcium.  He appears to love it!

Through the Tripawds forums, we randomly met Char and Bruno who are in the same town as us.  Char was told by her vet that our nearby university was the only place to get the amputation and chemo – we were happy to inform her that wasn’t true!  She’s since seen Porter’s vet and Bruno’s amputation is scheduled for this Thursday.  We have good thoughts for Bruno and know that he’ll be much happier after his amputation!  We can’t wait to get the kids together, and I’m a little hopeful that maybe we can get a small tripawds group going in our town.  These dogs are so strong & they deserve everything we can give them!!

We just had our blood work, and we’re about where the vet expected we’d be.  Red blood cells are good, but only 49% of normal.  White blood cells are low.  Neutrophyls (sp?) are also low, which apparently must be at a certain level before they can do chemo.  The vet thinks they’ll rise in the next week.  His third round of chemo is a week from yesterday.  If he gets in and they’re not recovered to appropriate levels, then he won’t get his treatment.

Porter is back at nearly 100% for his volunteering pet therapy work!  Today he has his second visit at the Shriners Hospital, and he’s already had two visits at the alzheimers home.  I find he’s just as happy to be there, see people, and get pets.  But he does tire out faster than before.  Part of that is the fact that he’s still undergoing chemo I’m sure, but it also just takes so much more energy for him to hop around.  He wants to lay down a lot, which works ok with some patients but not others (anyone confined to a bed or wheelchair).

His “yips” have gone down in frequency, yay!  I guess he might only have 3 a day – usually only one in the evenings when he’s home.  His appetite is down a little, but again I’m assuming that’s due to the chemo.  He still seems to get really tired on his walks.  We’re only up to about 8 blocks total, which is way less than before his amputation but more than he’s ever done since.  I have mixed feelings about it.  I don’t see much advancement now – he’ll go that distance, but then not really be able to go any farther.  I guess I shouldn’t push him much until after his chemo is all done – I have to remember on the surface he seems like his normal self, but inside he’s still getting poisoned.

We’ve added one more supplement to his regimen – Thorne Meriva-SR, which apparently is made of turmeric.  It’s funny, it is bright orange and looks like Cheeto cheese!  It supposedly helps his joints and also helps fight the cancer.  He’s still seeing his acupuncturist every two weeks during the course of his chemo & still loving it.  His incision is completely healed & the fur is about 1/3 of the way grown back in.

Mom’s birthday was Monday – I had a great day, but the best gift was having Porter still here.  I hope he’s here to celebrate my next few birthdays too!  He was very interested in the cake with the candle, but ran away when I blew it out (he doesn’t like smoke in his face!).  But it was cake, so he did come back – ha.

Porter has had a good three weeks since we last posted.  He seemed to have a good recovery after his first round of chemo, no noticeable side effects.  Which made us very happy!  Life has been good – he has been back to his normal self, chasing his cat and sleeping a lot.  We’ve noticed that he’s been super super cuddly and “needy” with us.  If we’re on the couch, he wants to be up there with us.  If we’re in the bathroom, he comes in and lays on the floor.  Porter has always had a very strong pack instinct, but it seems to have gotten much stronger.  He’s had two rounds of acupuncture and he’s still loving it. He’s also had another massage with a micro current treatment.  We left with specific instructions to give him nightly rubdowns – I think Porter’s got an insider deal with the masseuse!!

Porter has been doing a strange yippy thing – not the screaming that he had right after his surgery.  This is just a plain ole yip.  He’s laying there, then he yips, and jumps up like somebody bit him.  We have no idea what’s causing it.

Porter had his bloodwork a week ago and things looked good.  His numbers were on the low end of normal, but within expected ranges.  Which meant round two as planned!  He was so happy to see everyone at the vet’s office yesterday (which always surprises me considering all the bad things that happen there – I guess he really loves the vet & all the vet techs!).  I asked Dr. Brown about the yips – he’s not sure what’s causing them, but his best guess is scar tissue growing at his surgery site and affecting nerve endings.  He’s hopeful that it will get better over time.  We’re hoping!  He did ok with the chemo, except that we think he did vomit either last night before bed or sometime this morning, outside under the tree.  Dad found it today.  So Porter got a half a meal tonight, just in case his tummy was upset.  If no more puking, then he gets the rest of his dinner before bed!

Yes, we’ve reached that wonderful one month milestone!  We are so overjoyed with his progress and how well he is doing.  Porter is 100% off his pain meds, and his personality is completely back to his old self, which we are so happy with.  He is also LOVING his new food – he devours it immediately (and licks the bowl).  We were relying on the canned tuna because it was easy, but our acupuncturist said we shouldn’t have more than 3 meals a week of tuna.  Which meant a trip to the URM for bulk meat!  Chicken legs and sirloins it was – and at $1 and $2.50 a pound respectively, a great buy.  I cut out all the raw chicken bones and froze them because our massage therapist wants him to have several bones a week (for the marrow – it supports his joints).  Speaking of joints, we also added a few more supplements to help his joints.  We added FlexNow (a shea nut based cartilage and joint pill) and Trixsyn (hyleronic acid, which is the most important part of chondroitin).  He loves them all!

Porter also had a big milestone last week – he got back to his volunteer work!  We told the staff that we would let Porter tell us if he was tired and needed to stop.  My boy, of course he went the whole hour!  We brought along a yoga mat to help his grip when he sat for visits.  Now here’s the very universally strange part.  The Shriner’s Hospital mostly does osteopathic operations, and most of the kids we’ve seen have had spine and bone growth issues.  But on this visit, we saw our first partial amputee kid – really?!?!  He didn’t speak English (so I wasn’t sure if he got the relevance of Porter’s missing leg and how great he was doing) but he sure seemed to love him.  The nurses were all so happy to see him, and most of his visits were able to take place on the floor (most don’t because the kids are in beds and on meds).  I’d love to post a photo, but we can’t because of medical privacy.  He also did his first visit at the Alzheimers facility, and then went great too – although he did a LOT more visits there and seemed to get tired more quickly.

Porter saw the vet for a 2 week post-chemo blood draw.  Results came back good – his blood counts were on the low end of normal, which Dr. Brown expected.  He got the go-ahead for his second round of chemo next week.  He did explain that at some point, his blood counts would likely drop too low and we’d have to delay a treatment.  But I already knew that thanks to reading everything from other Tripawds – thanks guys!

Porter is running, and spending lots of time on the couch (strangely he seems to expect it now, when before he always had to wait for an invite).  I think he knows that he will be spoiled from now on!

Porter has made some more improvements in the last week!  We are weaning him off his Tramadol – he’s down to 1 pill a day.  We started him on his new Honest Kitchen food.  We weren’t sure if he’s like it, but he loves it!  We’ve been fixing it with canned tuna, but are working in beef and chicken as we can get it on sale from the store.  He devours it as soon as we put it in from of him.  We also are able to easily mix in his supplements and meds, which is a nice added benefit (someone posted that it was great for that!).

Porter also started chewing his rawhides again.  It was funny – he wasn’t very good at holding his bones with two paws.  It always felt like he wasn’t able to work both of them at the same time to hold the bone!  But now, with only one paw, he seems to hold it better!  Another example of him figuring out a “new way to be”!

Porter went for his first walk on Sunday!  Two blocks out and two blocks back.  I will freely admit – I love the fact that when he “walks” now, his ears flop!  It’s the cutest thing ever.  I would never have sacrificed a leg for that, but since it’s gone, it’s a nice cute perk.  He was a little tired afterwards, and laid down immediately afterwards, but I think that was mostly endurance.  But he loved the whole thing!  He was so excited, and pretty much ran the entire thing.

He also did his first full flight of stairs, at my best friend’s house.  I know “down” is worse than “up”, and unfortunately he had to go down first.  I stood in front of him because I was worried he would slip or fall.  But he did great!  He aimed each paw on each stair and navigated them perfectly.  This was also his first time around other dogs, and he did great with that too.  They smelled his incision area briefly, and Porter was fine with it.  Then, it was back to usual!

A week of more firsts, all good.  I’m really optimistic that things will continue to improve so quickly and that we’ll have no major hurdles.  Thanks to all the Tripawds Parents for all your great, positive words of encouragement – it has meant so much to us!

Porter had his first chemo on Tuesday, the same day that his stitches were removed.  Now, two days post chemo, I’m happy to report that Porter has handled it spectacularly!  I was most worried about nausea or loss of appetite, but in fact it’s the opposite – he’s ravenous!!  Which is funny – Porter is the most hungry dog I’ve ever owned.  However, the tramadol reduced his appetite.  So, we decided since he wasn’t too hungry, we’d just cut his food back and get a head start on the weight loss goal.  Dr. Brown enthusiastically reported that Porter had lost 10 lbs (5 lbs of which was leg) – but still, 5 lbs in two weeks was pretty great!  Then we started reducing his Tramadol.  Whoa, it was like Porter realized he’d been shorted food for two weeks & he’d make up for it!!

We got snow in the last few days – Porter has always loved snow, especially eating it!  But eating it on three legs took a little bit of work.  Dad thought he was spending too much time outside eating snow…I told him, if we’ve learned anything from this whole Big C experience, it’s that you should eat snow while the snow has fallen!  If he wants to spend all day eating snow, he can darn well do it!

Porter has also started making more adjustments to his daily routine because of his new three legged status.  We captured this brand new sleeping position tonight.  Porter has always done this very uncomfortable S-curve shaped sleeping position, but this new one involves bending his left paw under his head.  It’s fun watching him figure out new ways to be!

Well, we’ve made it to Week Two! A big week for tripawd moms, the day the stitches come out!  Dr. Brown said his incision looked great – stitches out & all healed. Dad dropped him off and he had his first round of carboplatin and he did really well. He also said we could reduce his tramadol to half his previous dose. One step closer to getting those icky pain meds out of his system. Unfortunately, I’m out of town for work, so it’s just the boys at home together – I imagine steak and in bed early!  Dad reports that he was great & just seems a little tired – he’ll probably get to go to work with dad, which will make him so happy!  We’re crossing our fingers for no side effects or nausea. I’ll be so happy to see him tomorrow night, by big strong handsome man (Porter, not my hubby – HA!)

Dad has been working so hard at thinking of better nicknames for Porter!  I posted some of his previous ideas, so now we’ll add to the list:

Dennis Hopper
Hopalong Cassidy
Skippy (dad seems to favor this one)
IPA (because he’s so hoppy!  That’s my fave)

On a sadder (but expected) note, Dr. Brown reported that his bone biopsy results came back positive for osteosarcoma.  So, we forge ahead with plans for chemo.  Dr. Brown also just returned from a conference where pain management was discussed.  Apparently, they’ve determined that tramadol doesn’t stay in the system as long as they originally thought.  We had been giving him his pills once every 12 hours, but now Dr. Brown is recommending a dose every 8 hours instead.  We had been giving him 1 1/2 pills twice a day, but now we’ll be switching to one pill every 8 hours (same total of three pills per 24 hours).  And hopefully, come next Tuesday, we won’t need any more pills at all!!

Porter’s first visit to his acupuncturist since his surgery, and he was sooooo happy!  Not only did he get to see his favorite people (the “people” acupuncturist and the secretary and the pet acupuncturist), but he got a treatment.  He has always loved his treatments, but today seemed especially good for him.  Once all the needles were in, he just laid out on his side and fell asleep!  Dr. Asterino and I talked through all his medications and treatment course.  She discussed several herbal supplements that she likes to have her cancer dogs on.  We decided to take it slow and just start him on one – Five Mushroom Formula by People’s Herbs.  She’s got two more planned for him, but wants to wait until he’s started his chemo.  She even called a colleague that specializes in treatments for cancer dogs to confirm that the supplements she wanted to use wouldn’t cause any problems with the chemo.  We also put together a start at a new food plan.  Instead of jumping head first into a complete homemade diet, she is recommending we start with a product called “Honest Kitchen” – which apparently is a dehydrated all-natural product with supplements added.  We are going to use the vegetable version, combined with fresh meat.  That way, we won’t have to worry about him getting all the nutrition he needs.  Then, we’ll have more time to figure out the best homemade diet for him.

I think this was a really great visit for him – such great energy from the people in that office.  After Porter finished his session (and Dad picked him up), I got my treatment too (from the people acupuncturist) – which was extremely good.  I remembered all the advice from other Tripawd moms that said – don’t forget to take care of yourself too!

Porter slept a lot today, which was good because he’s seemed a little tired.  Getting up and off the couch regularly on his own.  He’s also jumping in and out of the car on his own too!  After we “panic-yelled” the last time he scratched his stitches (and tore two out), I think he’s a little worried to scratch.  Both times today that he wanted to scratch, he twitched his back leg first – kind of a warning – “I really want to scratch, is that alright?”  Each time, I held his back paw & did a little itching around his stitches for him.  He liked that!