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!!