Buddy the Rescued Rottweiler

Well, as you might have read over on Nikki’s Blog, things have been going pretty good with Buddy’s sister and her cancer journey.

I wish I could claim the same good news for Buddy.

As you might remember, Buddy was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma in his right hind leg, and we pretty much figured that we’d caught it in time. We were also fortunate to get him into a pallative study at CSU that would spare his leg and yet still treat the cancer.

For the first 2 treatments (every 30 days), things were progressing normally and Buddy was doing fantastic. However about a week after his second treatment, we noticed that Buddy was starting to lose his appetite and just didn’t want to eat. He seemed fine everywhere else, was a happy dog, and had a great attitude, but just didn’t want to eat.

We called the folks at CSU and brought Buddy up to see them last week. After looking at him and doing some tests, it appears that the Duramax (a required pain medication as part of the study) had destroyed his kidneys. The reason he wasn’t eating was because his stomach was so full of acid. The protocol to try and solve this was intense IV therapy and 5 days of hospitalization to try and get the kidneys restarted. Even then no real guarantee, and the recommendation was to effectively end his life.

Well, being the types that like to get a second opinion on every major decision, we decided to let Dr. Pyne take a look at Buddy and see what she could see. She recommended that we bring him in and drop him off for 2 days of therapy (with being allowed to go home over night) and then see what the kidney tests show. If they showed improvement, then maybe we could get the kidneys going again..

Buddy spend both Friday and Saturday in the hospital hooked up to fluid IVs, and then Saturday evening the kidney tests were run again. The tests showed slight improvement on 2 of 3 tests, and major improvement on the last. The two tests that were only slightly improved were still in the range to cause concern, so Dr. Pyne suggested we give him a couple days rest, and then see if we couldn’t get him to eat and maybe kick-start those kidneys.. Today Buddy seems as if he might be pulling out of it. He’s eating much better, and is acting very much like he’s not in the same pain that he was before..

Keep your fingers crossed for Buddy. We really need him to pull through this, as the cancer seems to be the least of our problems right now, and honestly the radiation treatment seemed to do the trick there, as he’s been running and jumping like normal.

This entry was posted on June 21, 2010 at 7:16 pm and is filed under Palliative Treatment, Post Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.