Friday, June 08, 2007

Exciting news on the Lymphoma front!

Now I have tried for the last three nights to find Raven's lymph nodes to assess their size and for the life of me I cannot find them! I keep looking, much to her bored disgust, but I simply can't feel them - this, I believe, is an excellent sign. Complete remission will not be confirmed until a needle aspirate is taken of her nodes but this has to be a strong indicator of a clear prognosis.
The doxorubicin treatment does not appear to have knocked her around too much, she has eaten every day. Last night she left half of her meal and she rejected sardines. I wonder if perhaps the drugs can have an impact on palate and taste for the dogs as she normally likes them. She is really fond of raw stuff and still likes her kibble even when covered in natural yogurt laced with her supplements. Her current supplement regime includes three fish oil caps, heaped teaspoon of Sasha's Blend, flaxseed oil, half teaspoon of Musashi L-Arginine and a half teaspoon of Musashi L-Glutamine.
She usually has this mixed in with natural yogurt, our homemade vegetable mash, and either chicken necks, a Billinghurst BARF patty, raw diced lamb, sardines (when she likes them!) and of late a couple of teaspoons of some tinned My Dog which is the beef strips in sauce. I haven't given her the My Dog more than a couple of times - I use it when I have the feeling she's not her usual ravenous self. It helps her to eat more.
Her toenail has fully recovered from last weeks accident as well, she is dying to get out and do something. We'll probably go out for a long, sedate walk tomorrow, we have a trial Sunday afternoon.
I've emailed Ken with a number of my initial bone marrow transplant questions and he has certainly been thorough with his replies. The good thing is that it can be done at any point doesn't have to happen in the next four weeks. So that will give us more time to investigate all the pros and cons.
Things are definitely looking up, but I don't kid myself, I can see from the struggle of others that I have read about on the web and on lists - this journey resembles more of a roller coaster ride than anything else. I'm not expecting one straight ascent that's for sure.


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