Chemo moves on; Cystitis much the same

Well, the boy was a bit better on Saturday, and worse again on Sunday :-(
Since then he's had some good days and some leaky days with no particular pattern.

Andy was away for the weekend (some excuse or other about a Stag Do ), and I was inspired to improvise a nappy / incontinence pad for the boy, using a strip of towel wrapped around him, securing another folded up bit of towel to catch the leaks. It worked quite well, so after our visit to the vet on Monday morning I bought some cheap disposable nappies and some ladies' incontinence pads to try. I'm pleased to say (because it's the much cheaper option) that half a nappy does the trick nicely. I've been using cohesive bandage (e.g. vetwrap) to hold the lot in place, but it doesn't last more than a few re-wraps before getting pretty mangled, so need to find a more robust solution for that bit. Jazz, bless him, doesn't seem to mind it a bit and just takes it in his stride. He's such a good, tolerant patient, thank goodness.

I also ordered some strips of rubber matting to protect the carpet, and with these down the place looks SO much more homely (not!), but at least we shouldn't get any more drips on the carpet (not generally considered a benefit by potential house buyers, we find!) Not sure the smell of rubber helps though, but hopefully that'll wear off soon.

We visited Fiona for his weekly (so far) blood test on Monday. Everything's still going fine as far as the chemo's concerned, so that's good news, and we won't be having more Vincristine this week. We really have reached the next stage in his treatment for the Lymphoma.

His bladder was still very thickened and there's really nothing else we can do about this for him now, except wait it out. Fiona offered to lend us some vet-bed for his crate (it wicks away the moisture to keep him more comfortable through the night or any other time we need to confine him there without nappies). Unfortunately, she didn't have anything big enough there at the time, so we'll pick that up from the Twyford surgery tomorrow morning.

He weighed 24.3kg, so I think we're getting the food about right.

The blood test results show that his white cell count is still up at a healthy level. He's still slightly anaemic, but nothing to worry about.

From today we only have one day's worth of the Amitriptyline(the anti-depressant) left, so I asked Fiona whether we might as well do without it: I can't see that it's had any positive effect on him (and am wondering whether it's the cause of him leaking 'cause it's making him too laid back), but I was a bit concerned about changing more than one thing at once, since we're also reducing the Prednisolone (steroid) dose to every other day from today too. She was of the opinion that we might as well see how he goes without it over the weekend, so I haven't given him any more this evening.

Meanwhile, we've been splitting the garlic between his breakfast and dinner, but it doesn't seem to be making any difference. Fiona's sure that the Leukeran shouldn't be affecting his bladder, and anyway the link between him taking that and the next day being a bad one seems to have been broken. I got a Pro-Biotic yoghurt drink for him instead of live yoghurt this week, which he's been having half with breakfast and half with dinner.

I have noticed that I now find myself thinking in terms of his cystitis as a semi-permanent condition, rather than something I'm expecting to get better "in the next week or so". I hope I'm wrong. Surely it MUST get better some time soon?