Buddy the Rescued Rottweiler

Unfortunately they weren’t what we had hoped for.

After culturing the cells in the lab, the good folks at CSU have determined that Buddy has an aggressive form of osteosarcoma. This comes somewhat as a surprise to us, because osteosarcoma is pretty common, and the docs had a very tough time figuring it out by the looks alone.

But the good news is that it doesn’t change our treatment plan as far as the radiation goes. Buddy will be part of a study, “Radiation Therapy With or Without Bisphosphonates For Palliative Treatment of Canine Osteosarcoma” (Say that 3 times fast). We will get him in for his first treatment next week, and he’ll then go back 2 more times over the next month.

What this means is that Buddy will get to keep his leg, but he’ll be pain-free and has a very good prognosis for longer life. This of course won’t cure the cancer (neither does amputation), but it will reduce the chances that the cancer will aggressively spread, and will most-importantly improve the quality of Buddy’s life.

One thing that I didn’t realize is that the study itself is directly related to treating bone cancers in human patients as well, so Buddy will actually be helping all of us as well!

This entry was posted on April 15, 2010 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.