Steady as he goes

Well, there's no obvious change in Jazz one way or the other. He's been in with me again and very calm today.

I have had a chat with Fiona (who has also seen the short letter I wrote to her, and agrees that all things considered, it's probably time to stop treating aggressively and let him go).

The Hill's prescription kidney-friendly diet he's on has reduced protein compared with carbohydrate & fat (i.e. pretty much the opposite of what he needs for the lymphoma). Also, the protein is of "high biological value", i.e. the amino acids are very close to the dog's own, so there is very little to waste and excrete. It also has additional potassium, and suitably balanced calcium and phosphorous. (With kidney failure, phosphorous tends to rise and calcium levels tend to fall.)

Other sources of appropriate protein are WHITE chicken breast (for some reason, the amino acids in brown chicken meat are very different), white fish (such as cod or coley), or cottage cheese. If feeding these, feed with rice in the ratio of 2 rice : 1 protein by volume.

Meanwhile, we'll stop giving him Leukeran and Prednisolone for the time-being, to give his kidneys a rest and see what happens. We've got a couple of weeks before he's due his next Vincristine injection to decide what to do about that.

In view of his kidney condition, trying the Metacam for his bladder is a big no-no, so we've abandoned that plan.

We're due to see Fiona for another blood test tomorrow evening (and will presumably get the results on Friday). Once we have the results of that, we can formulate a treatment plan. I suspect that this will be to concentrate on keeping his kidneys as healthy as possible and to treat the lymphoma as best we can without aggravating the kidneys.

Fiona thinks that we'll have a better idea what to expect after another week - 10 days ... which obviously implies that he has at least that long. Without the results, and knowing that Jazz defies all prior medical knowledge, she (currently) thinks that we could possibly still be talking months rather than the days we were fearing.