My twelve-and-a-half-year-old Lab mix, Bear, was just diagnosed with lymphoma. I was told that with palliative care only, he has less than six months, but up to two years if we pursue twenty-six weeks of chemotherapy. His blood work shows only mild abnormalities, and a chest X-ray would be needed to make sure there wasn’t metastasis to his lungs, but apparently this is a reasonably treatable cancer (~50% chance of remission).
My inclination is not to torture my big, sweet buddy for my own comfort. But I wanted to hear from Dopers who have gone through this with their dogs. Which treatment path did you choose, what were the outcomes, and how do you feel about your decision in hindsight?
I believe pics are required in threads such as these, so I’ll get on that. Thanks, all.
First, I’m so sorry that you and Bear are facing this. I haven’t gone through this with my dog, but I did witness my friend managing her dog’s lymphoma. She chose to fight and got about a year above the expected six months, but it sure wasn’t pretty.
I didn’t feel that her decision for her dog was right, then or now. That dog suffered a lot, and, being an animal, nobody could explain that the suffering was for her own good or to prolong her life. Her quality of life was pretty dismal, she was low-energy, could not eat properly and was just … sad. She spent a lot of her last days miserable and she had been afraid of the vet visits even before it all started, so she became a whimpering emotional wreck. That doesn’t mean your dog would be like that. Obviously, this is a deeply personal decision. I can only say that, as a daughter of a cancer victim, sometimes a prolonged and painful fight just exhausts and poisons your last good days together. If you decide to let Bear go, that sounds pretty selfless to me.
That said, if you look into your dog’s eyes and he’s still chipper and you genuinely feel there’s a will to live there, there is no harm in trying the treatment if that’s what you decide and the x-rays look good. I would suggest something that worked for my husband and I with our cat with kidney failure – make a list of the symptoms, situations and behaviors that would dictate the dog being euthanized to prevent his suffering. Make the list before they arise and before you start the treatment. Post it somewhere prominent and be honest with yourself when you observe any of this things on your list. That’ll avoid pushing the situation further than it should go.
I wish you and Bear luck. It’s wonderful that you’re thinking so thoroughly about your buddy’s wellbeing.
My dog got cancer at the ripe old age of 5. He lost a lot of weight and started vomiting. We loved him but we decided not to pursue extraordinary measures.
At 12 1/2 it would be even easier. I’d let him live with his condition as long as he could get around and wasn’t in any pain. Then, when the day came that he couldn’t, I’d feed him the best dinner of his life then take him on one last walk.
So sorry about the diagnosis. You gave him a wonderful life and that’s about all we can do sometimes.
Thank you both. I just got the call this afternoon and will be talking things over with my husband tonight. He’s an old dog, particularly for his (~105-pound) size. I just want him to be happy as long as possible. I’d be grateful to hear more about others’ experiences.
My dog didn’t have lymphoma, but he was diagnosed with oral cancer last July when he was 11 1/2 years old. I took him to a specialist, and they told me they could prolong his life by about six months with six radiation treatments that would cost $600 each. This dog, while happy and chipper, had chronic health issues all his life, and I’d already spent at least $1,000 a year on vet bills alone for him. I decided against the radiation and for giving him the best few months he could have. For as long as we could we went for long walks and wanders; I took him with me to places when I could, and I let him eat what he wanted and cuddled him many times a day and told him I loved him. He died in early October, after the cancer started advancing down his throat. He didn’t seem to be suffering too much, but he was suffering some, that was clear, and he was starting to have trouble breathing, so I let him go. My heart was still broken when he died, but I know that for his almost 12 years he had the best life and the most love I could give him.
I’d second Kotka’s last paragraph, re: looking for symptoms or something that would definitely tell you “it is time”. That doesn’t necessarily address palliative versus treatment care, though, but it may help you guide for how long should you help your dog. Because Bear needs care either way.
Canine lymphoma protocols vary a lot, with many of the most succesful ones being also, sadly, the most expensive options. BUT, even a “cheaper” option may give you months and months to enjoy your dog’s company, while at the same time looking for those signs of “it’s time”. Certainly, you should discuss all types of treatments with the veterinarian. Perhaps some protocols may not be as convenient depending on your finances or the dog’s disposition. For example, a dog that previously would try to bite whoever tried putting a needle on its leg may not be the best candidate for lots of IV drugs. But that is your call.
I’ve seen dogs and cats being treated for lymphoma. And you couldn’t tell they were sick. As a general rule, for all types of cancer treatments, animal treatment focuses more on quality vs quantity of life. They tend to be less invasive/harsh than the human treatment protocols. There are a few days that are critical because of temporary drop in white blood cells, but bloodwork gets checked regularly (and is often included in the “treatment package”).
An otherwise healthy, 12 1/2 year old dog with mild clinical signs, not yet sick, and recently diagnosed with cancer is… how can I put it… not a bad candidate for cancer, just because of age (age by itself is not a disease).
Also remember that you can stop and switch treatment at any point, if you see the condition worsen.
We’ve done chemo treatments for a dog and a cat with lymphoma. The cat is still in full remission 3 years later with the dog we made it for a year and a half. In both cases the chemo was well tolerated. Both the dog and cat would have about 8 hours of lethargy about 24 hours after an infusion. We never had any serious chemo side effects in either of our guys. In both cases but especially with the cat there was a huge improvement in their condition very rapidly. With our cat the large masses in her neck nearly vanished in the first 36 hours after an infusion. Both dog and cat were noticeably more active and clearly feeling better after the treatments.
Overall it was mostly a positive experience for us. With our dog I regret continuing treatment after the first remission. If I could go back I would have gone to palliative care immediately after the cancer returned. Our cat had the kind of one in a million outcome that you dream of. They call her the vinblastine wonder cat at the UW Vet Hospital.
Some of the things the oncologist told us that helped us to make the decision to pursue chemo were:
-A cat or dog doesn’t know they have a terminal disease. Once they start feeling better they go about their business as usual.
-An extra 6 months or a year for a dog or cat is a lot longer in terms of their overall lifespan than it is for you or me.
-The chemo drugs used for lymphoma are usually pretty effective with minimal side effects. Some pets may have severe side effects but it is relatively uncommon.
A couple more bullet points since I love bullet points:
-It was expensive but we could afford it and chose to do it. I never felt like the vet school was pressuring us to pursue treatment just to generate some revenue.
-We are a ten minute drive from UW Vet School which has a very well respected small animal oncology department.
-If you do try treatment for your dog make up a list in advance of some of your dogs favorite activities. If your dog stops enjoying some of those evaluate the list and decide if you want to continue treatment. If you decide to stop they will probably put your dog on prednisone. This will help for a while but you want to be prepared to euthanize at that point.
-If you get one remission and the cancer returns I wouldn’t go chasing a second remission. It is extremely rare to get a second remission. Our oncologist explained all of this to us and we decided to try it anyway. This is my only regret about the whole experience.
I’d be happy to touch on any other details or answer any questions you might have.
Many years ago I had a beloved 6-year-old cat with lymphoma. Chemotherapy was very experimental back then, but I decided to give it a try. The therapy put him into remission, which added 15 symptom-free months to his life, followed by a relatively quick and painless demise. Not the best outcome, but I’d definitely do it again.
I’m so sorry you have to deal with this. It’s such a hard decision to put an animal down, and I find myself being selfish about it most of the time - I don’t want to feel the pain of the animal’s death, so I delay it. It’s so hard to just do what is best for them.
About a year and a half ago, our Husky Sichotewas diagnosed with Lymphoma at 8. We kept her on steroids, a cough suppressant and pain med’s and she lived for another eight months. She had some bad day and a lot of good day, but we could tell she was suffering somewhat.
The day we decided it was time was horrible on us both. She had been up coughing all night, and in the middle of the night I finally let her go outside to sleep. I could hear her coughing until dawn. My husband came home and was in the back yard when I went outside and told him about what had happened. He called her from the dog house and she very slowly came out and came towards him - totally abnormal behavior as she usually bounds right over to him. She stopped half way and lay down, panting. I had never seen bags under a dogs eyes until then. She was just…done.
We went in and called the vet (it was Saturday) and arranged for her to come and do a home euthanization on Monday. I’m so glad that’s what we chose. Sichote got to die in her own home, on her own comfy bed, with us sitting there holding her. She was an awesome dog.
This bears repeating, over and over and over again with not just cancer but other chronic conditions.
I was also told that, only to see clients, acquaintances, and friends lament “treatment X is so expensive, but it only gets us Y months (up to a couple of years)!”. This was after (the same people) had made comments like “well, you know, one human year is the same as 7 dog years”… not true either, but you get the idea.
Our collie got lymphoma at about age 6, and we chose the palliative route. We had a few good months with him, then put him down when he got uncomfortable enough that basic meds didn’t help anymore.
Our current dog, a Golden Retriever, age 6, has an expanding fibrosarcoma in her snout, and we’re taking it day by day with palliative meds. She’s happy, eating, and playful, but she sure looks weird. It will eventually need to end, when the tumor either erodes or necroses, or obstructs her nasal airway too much. Surgery would take off a chunk of her face and jaw.
In both cases, we were offered radiation/chemo/surgery, with Huuuuuuuuge price tags and the knowledge that maybe it’d buy 2 or so years. But the vets advised against it, saying that the dogs would be sick a lot during the treatment.
One friend did go the chemo route, and swore she’d never do that again. It bought some extra time at the cost of quality.
What a big, beautiful, fluffy doggie, Bob. I’m very sorry that you have to go through this.
Thank you Kotka for the idea of this list. I have an older dog and while she’s not sick, at her age this is something I need to think about and get ready for.
I’m sorry Bear has cancer, Bob. Our Golden Retriever Lady was diagnosed with lymphoma when she was about 8. I’m very glad we decided to pursue chemotherapy, but it was expensive.
She had seemed healthy and active when we took her to the vet for the swelling in her jaws. The vet did a biopsy of her lymph nodes (on her legs, I think) to diagnose the cancer, and following the biopsy surgery, Lady just lay there on her side, clearly feeling sick. Within a day of the first chemo treatment, she was energetic and happy again. She went into remission quickly and had a year of very good health. She didn’t mind the oncologist’s office visits with the needles nearly as much as regular vet visits (which sometimes came with baths). She was always happy to get into the car with me, even though the vet was the only place I took her. (My husband took her to the fun places.)
The treatments didn’t make her feel bad at all. I definitely wouldn’t call them torture, the way they can be for humans. Most of the time, I took her every other week to the oncologist. There was a cycle of different drugs they used on her and only one drug involved an IV for 15 minutes or so. Most of the time it was a quick injection like a shot, and sometimes it was a pill we could give her at home. She was an enthusiastic eater throughout.
After a year or so, the cancer recurred and the treatments were not so effective. She had a very gradual decline in energy over the next nine months. She would be very excited to go out for a walk, but quickly got tired and flopped down a few houses down the street and wouldn’t walk any farther.
We decided not to continue treatments at that point because they weren’t helping and we were about out of money we could afford to spend. The next three months were very difficult as we watched her get sicker. According to our vet, she wasn’t in actual pain, but we could tell she wasn’t feeling great. When she stopped eating and stopped greeting us happily at the door, we knew it was about time to take her to be euthanized.
She lived two years from her diagnosis. The first year she was happy and in quite good health and it was well worth the time and money. We used the money for her treatment that we would have spent on family vacations and we didn’t regret it. I’m going to agree with previous posters who said trying to obtain a second remission maybe wasn’t worth it, though.
I hope that information helps you decide what to do.
I want to point out, maybe, again, that the whole family of canine lymphomas is one of the tumor groups with the best treatments, the one where chemotherapy has been the most effective, and the one where it can give some of the best results. It is also one of the most researched animal tumors.
IOW, comparing different outcomes from different tumors is not the best, as unfortunately, many other canine tumors do not have as good treatments available nor as good outcomes (for example: oral/nailbed melanomas, fibrosarcomas, oral/nasal tumors in general, bladder tumors, hemangiosarcomas, and really malignant mast cell tumors).
This pretty much mirrors our experience. Our dog Squirt must have been feeling somewhat ill for a while before her diagnosis. After her second treatment she was lively and bouncy again. It was like taking a few years off overnight. She was 13 when she was diagnosed.
She had some trepidation the first few visits to the hospital but after awhile she got to know the vets and techs and then it became just another adventure. They would feed her treats (often baby food) while she got her infusion. She was always quite willing and happy to be led off for her treatment. I don’t think it was stressful for her at all. She never really had any side effects except for a sharp decline in energy and appetite about 24 to 36 hours after her treatment. Not every treatment was IV. The protocol we used included a few oral medications as well.
I would do it again in a heartbeat. Like I said above my only regret is holding out hope for that second remission and letting things drag out a little longer than I would have liked. It was too easy to just wait for a better result after the next treatment or to try a different drug. In the end the list we made of her favorite things was what helped us to know when to end treatment. It looks like a few people have mentioned it and I think its a good idea no matter what course of action you decide to take.
Bear looks like a real sweetheart. Give him an extra scratch tonight from me and one for yourself as well
Thank you, everyone. You’ve given me some more to think about.
I took Bear to the vet last Friday because over a two-week period he had begun lagging behind our other dogs on walks, and then last Wednesday began falling on the linoleum and having extreme difficulty getting up. He has arthritis in his hind legs, and we assumed that its worsening was behind his troubles. It turns out the arthritis is not terribly severe at all.
We started Bear on prednisone last Friday, and it has perked him up a lot and kept him steadier on his feet. My husband and I are still talking things through, but it seems to me that learning the stage of the lymphoma would help to inform our decision.
All his life he’s been good, sweet, and gentle–and strong in body. I hate this.
The Wonder Beaglewas diagnosed with lymphoma when he was about 12. Like Bear, he rather abruptly began to slow down and couldn’t handle walking more than a walk around the block (he’d been doing twice that with ease). Like you, I assumed that this was back or leg pain, but a vet check turned up enlarged lymph nodes and subsequent Bad News.
We went the palliative care route because he had a history of back pain attributed to spondylosis. We’d been advised that the back problems were manageable but not curable, and it seemed unfair to the dog to add to his discomfort with chemo. Prednisone gave him quite a bit of relief and gave us one last summer with him.
As others have mentioned, it was really, really clear when he was ready to go. He woke up seeming OK one day, and some time between his morning walk and mid-morning, he just kind of gave up. No matter what route you take, he’ll let you know when he’s ready.
Okay, I couldn’t read all the way through this thread without tearing up, so I’m just jumping in.
What treatment to pursue is a very personal decision, but here are a few things to consider:
As my vet explained it to me, animal chemotherapy is still palliative. The dosages and thus the side effects are lessened relative to human chemo, but you will not get a cure. You might get remission, but he will relapse later on.
I went through chemo a few years back (for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, coincidentally, which is also an “easy” cancer in humans). Chemotherapy sucks way more than you can imagine. I have a pretty vivid imagination, along with something of a morbid streak but even my imagination didn’t come close to the reality. It hurts, and there’s not even a type of pain that you’d be familiar with that I could compare it to. I got through it because I knew there would be an end-point (my treatment went textbook perfect, really), and I knew it would make me better. Bear isn’t going to understand anything other than he feels like shit.
I lost my kitty at the end of last year to cancer. When I was going through it, my therapist told me that when it comes time to make the decision to give him peace, you know. And it was true. He even seemed to be recovering for a couple days prior, but when it was time, I knew without a doubt that I had to stop intervening and let him go. I think the list is also a good idea, but you know Bear best, and I believe it will be clear to you when the balance tips.
My Jack Russell was healthy, high quality food and no junk food. One morning I discovered a lump on the left side of his neck. A trip to the vet and aspiration of the tumor indicated lymphoma.
My wife and I are strong advocates of alternative medicine and so off to the oncologist. He said maybe 6 months to 1 year of survival. Probably will be a relapse if he went into remission. This is a huge commitment and expense $8k at least. Having spent my career in healthcare I know that even with all the advances in cancer research it is still lagging in results.
My dog is now in his 7th week since diagnosis. Good days, bad days, but…mostly good days. We are fortunate to have a holistic Vet and he is working closely with us.
I would be happy to share the regimen if interested but as with ANY form of treatment there are variations to consider for each patient.
I have read so much that my eyes ache. Here are several things to consider.
2.Animal Health Archives - Robert Redfern
3.If you are feeding your dog commercial food get rid of it. A diet of 50% beef, fish, chicken and vegetables, broccoli, kale, organic carrots, spinach…
4. Message your dog and spend positive time with him. Make sure you keep on walking him.
5. Feed your dog small amounts throughout the day. You want to keep him interested in food.
6. Consider Ozone therapy
7. Very small barely therapeutic levels of prednisone.
As I mentioned, my wife and I believe in options and do not dismiss traditional medicine. We weigh all options. In this case we came down on the side of complimentary medicine.
Bandit is doing well he shows great energy, interest in food, walks, fetching his ball…believe me this disease is a roller coaster ride. The odds aren’t so great but it is important to be persistent, positive and above all drop down and say a prayer for your pet. You will feel better and when hoping for a miracle there is only one place to go.
but even my imagination didn’t come close to the reality. It hurts, and there’s not even a type of pain that you’d be familiar with that I could compare it to. I got through it because I knew there would be an end-point (my treatment went textbook perfect, really), and I knew it would make me better. Bear isn’t going to understand anything other than he feels like shit.
