Our Journey Through Osteosarcoma
We had just over 2 1/2 months with our sweet girl, once we found out about the osteosarcoma. From diagnosis, to amputation, to chemotherapy, to metronomic therapy, to last night: it was about 10 weeks that we would never regret because we knew we tried everything and we had that little extra precious time with her.
We will likely tell the story of her last night later when it is not so fresh. Thank you to this community for all of the support and love you gave us. We are very grateful.
In the spirit of “being more dog,” here is a short video of Molly swimming, taken a few weeks ago. We got her a life jacket (more for our peace of mind than her actual need) and she has been a total rockstar. The water has always been her favorite!
It’s been about 6 weeks since I’ve blogged about our journey, and that’s because I tried really hard to focus on the “now” and just enjoy time with Molly. I found myself becoming addicted to Googling her symptoms, estimating how much more time we’d have with her, imagining both the best and the worst… And I decided that I needed to “be more dog” and get out of that space in my head! There’s nothing wrong with being educated, of course, but when it becomes borderline obsession (and takes away from time with our Molly girl), I knew I needed a break. I’ve still been checking in here and there, reading forums and blogs, but I think it was important for us to be together as a family and not think about the “what ifs.”
That said, bad news has driven me back to a need to write it all out. We started Molly on carboplatin, her chemotherapy, two weeks after the amputation. She had one treatment on 6/18 and the second on 7/13. Both went without major complications — the first one made her throw up so we administered anti-nausea medication prior to the second, which helped a lot; and in the weeks following the treatment her platelet count was a bit low, but not enough to adjust the carbo dosage. Our third treatment, alongside a chest scan to see how the lung mets were behaving, was scheduled for this morning. We were really antsy to get this set of x-rays done, especially since over the past week Molly’s breathing had become more labored at night . I would wake up at 1 or 2am and hear Molly wheezing and ‘huffing’ as she slept on her side. I went back to Google (ugh) and found a slew of possibilities… I even read about famous Tripawd Jerry’s situation, where they found that the mets were pressing his windpipe while he slept on the affected side. I tried to convince myself that it could be allergies or the summer heat and just waited as patiently as I could for today’s appointment.
Unfortunately, the scans showed that the nodules we knew about had grown, and that additional ones have appeared. The carboplatin has not been effective for Molly’s cancer. We immediately stopped the carboplatin and moved to Cytoxan, which is an oral chemo medication. Pending her full blood work, she’ll start that this afternoon. We also found some fluid in her chest and some indications of pneumonia; we have antiobiotics to help with the latter. The fluid is currently not enough to aspirate so we will have to keep a close eye on her breathing… If things get worse, we’ll head back to get her chest tapped. In a month, assuming all is “well,” we’ll get another chest scan to see if there’s any update (paws crossed!).
When I logged into Tripawds this morning after receiving the news from CSU, I read a few updates about dogs with osteosarcoma who recently came back with clean chest scans. I can’t tell you how incredibly happy I am for those pups and their parents because I know how badly we hoped for better news than what we got today. I (and Jordan) am also really angry that the carbo didn’t work for Molly. Do we regret moving forward with the treatment we chose? Of course not, because we would have never known if it would have worked or not. But, it is the hardest thing to feel like you have no control over a problem that you ache so badly to fix.
We’re not going to take our eyes off the goal of giving Molly the best possible quality of life over the coming months (hopeful for at least that amount of time, and our oncologist today said that “months are a conservative estimate”). Per usual, we are really grateful to have this forum — even if we abandoned it for a bit — to share our story and be encouraged by others.
XO,
Kirby, Jordan, & Molly