Resumption of chemo

Jazz has had his first Vincristine injection of his second course of chemo. I left him with Fiona (having personally acted as nurse / vein raiser to insert the canula before I left) just after 9:00, and collected him at around 12:30. During that time he had both the Vincristine and a couple of hours' worth of fluids. Weight today was 24kg.

They sent him home with the expected Prednisolone and Leukeran, plus some Tagamet. The Prednisolone is to be taken every day (4.5 per day) for the next week (starting tomorrow), and then reducing to every other day. The Leukeran is to be taken every other day right from the start (2 per day). In addition, 2 Tagamet to be taken twice a day, at least an hour after other medication for 3 days after each Vincristine injection, starting tonight.

The plan this time is to give him an 8 week course of Vincristine once a week, and then to switch to a different regime from last time: one week of Vincristine, Prednisolone and Leukeran, and one week off everything. (Last time we kept going with the Leukeran and Prednisolone, and the Vincristine injections dropped to once every three weeks.)

So, to cope with all this, I now have a complicated diary of drugs and vet's appointments on the kitchen wall.

He seems mostly OK in himself, although he was a little odd when I took him to the park late this afternoon. He'd chase after the ball, and then couldn't quite seem to work out what to do once he'd picked it up. It was quite amusing to watch his sudden apparent brain/memory failure - it wasn't the sort of thing that seemed alarming. And on the other hand, he was perfectly alert to everything else going on in the park. There's certainly no sign of the kidney-failing dopiness that we saw after his last two doses of Vincristine.