The story so far - 2 weeks after first treatment

Well, it's been a really long two weeks, and the first week was by far the longest.

One of us has been sleeping downstairs with him every night so we can let him out. Having initially thought that this might only last a few days, we were now told that the cystitis is likely to last as long as the drug that caused it is still in his system. As the dosage interval for that is three weeks, it'll probably be 3-4 weeks in all. We've got a routine going now - I'm home on Mondays anyway, and have booked Wednesdays off. Andy's working at home on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Fiona's been talking to the canine cancer specialists, and they haven't ever seen such an acute cystits reaction before either. They've recommended (obviously) that we try a different drug when he would have been due for the next dose of Cyclophosphamide. The alternative is one that he'd take every couple of days, so fingers crossed that the cystitis will clear up then, and we can start to get back to something approaching normal.

Meanwhile, although Jazz is feeling uncomfortable enough that he wants to go out frequently, it seems that he's not actually in pain when passing water, as far as we can tell. He is very subdued though. Fiona's a little concerned that with this extended bout of cystitis, he may not regain full capacity and muscle control of his bladder, so we're not out of the woods yet, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We've now phased out the diuretic and muscle relaxant, and he's now on Valium (Diazepam, to be precise, complete with leaflet warning against driving or operating machinery, and with recommended dosage for helping anxiety in children who are bed-wetting, among other things). This is intended to help him stop worrying about needing to go. To be honest, I don't think it's having an awful lot of physical effect, but it's probably helping with his stress levels.

Luckily, Jazz is a model patient and takes all these pesky needles in his stride. He's now had his second weekly injection and second weekly blood test. The lymph nodes that were enlarged are now getting back to somewhere near normal (I can't find them any more, even with help from the vet). On Friday we got a call to say that this time the blood test results showed that we're starting to kill off the bone marrow as well as the cancer cells. So, back I went to the vet for more antibiotics (we'd completed the previous prescription the day before) to prevent secondary infections while his immune system is compromised. Our regular Monday morning appointment tomorrow will now be for another blood test instead of treatment. I've also been asked to take a urine sample this time. Collecting that will be a new experience that I'm REALLY looking forward to. That should be fun! If the results from that blood test show that things are back to normal, he'll get the next treatment on Thursday evening (which was originally booked for his weekly blood test). If not, we'll keep on doing blood tests until it is (and then presumably adjust the dose accordingly).

At his last visit on Wednesday his weight was continuing to go down (from 24+ kg originally to 22kg), but his appetite seems to have mostly recovered - provided we feed him "nice" things ;-). The pills are all going down well with Chilli Beef or BBQ Chicken meat paste (with most of the powdery ones ground up and mixed with the meat paste, and the others buried in it). Luckily, he thinks this is wonderful treat time.

It's now 2 weeks since the devastating dose was given, so hopefully after another week or so things will start to pick up.



Since his operation 3 weeks ago, Jazz is sporting a silly goatee beard above the patch they shaved (see picture). I really must get round to trimming that - it does look stupid. On the other hand, he's so fluffy that unless you're low down and he's looking up, you don't even see the bald patch under his chin. He's been wearing his racing harness instead of a collar so that it doesn't rub on the scar. He also has bald patches on his front legs for the injections (they're alternating legs to save the veins, and taking the blood for the blood test from elsewhere). I don't think he'd win too many show classes just now, but it still doesn't stop him wearing that "butter wouldn't melt" expression.