Month: March 2012

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!