Windy Possibilities: Katie update

Photo by Amy Lynn Scarborough of GypsyPearl Studio

Katie is doing much better than anyone expected, she's had no symptoms of nasal cancer in over 5 months now! Thought I'd put a little information out there on what we've done, just so people like me can find it. There isn't a ton of info on canine nasal cancer and I think I found every little scrap of it when Katie was diagnosed.

We've done a lot of different things for Katie and it's hard to know what is helping her most, I think it's probably a combination of everything. But Katie was having nose bleeds (the most obvious symptom of nasal cancer) every day before and now she hasn't had one in over 5 months and she seems 100% happy & healthy. I really don't know if she's cured, if she was misdiagnosed (although they assured us there wasn't anything else it could be), if she's in remission, or if it'll come back tomorrow.

When we found out Katie had cancer I started researching and found Lucy's site, Lucy has nasal cancer like Katie and has had no symptoms for almost 2 years now! The general prognosis for nasal cancer is 3-6 months without treatment and 12-18 months with full radiation treatment (which we were told costs ~$10,000!!!). So Lucy has actually lived longer than she would have been expected to live if they had done radiation! Lucy's dad must be a microbiologist or something, the site is super technical, but the link is a list of supplements she was on at the time of that posting. I chose some for Katie after reading pretty much the entire site (being a science nerd pays off every now and then!), and deciding what I thought would help her most. Katie's supplement list is below. We stopped giving her most of the supplements a month or so ago (I actually do think she may be cured, but at the first sign of any issue, we'll start all the supplements again).

Katie's Supplements:

With the morning meal:

Fish oil 1000 mg

Vitamin C 1000 mg
Glutamine 1000 mg
Arginine 500 mg
CoEnzyme Q10 100 mg
Red Ginseng 400 mg

Curcumin 500 mg

with the evening meal:

Fish oil 1000 mg
Arginine 500 mg
Milk thistle 150 mg

IP6 600 mg

Sometimes Curcumin again in the evening

I also switched both Katie and Connor to a raw diet, it was pretty scary at first, but it's no big deal now. They eat raw beef, pork, turkey & chicken (Bones included!!) and sometimes canned salmon (which is cooked). It's even a little less expensive than the really good dog food we fed them before. Jeff likes to call Katie "Killer" because she just plows right through everything we give her! Connor is a little more gentle and gnaws on bones for a while before he eats them. I think this has helped them both with general skin & shedding & dirty teeth issues. Hard to say if it helped with the cancer...

Probably the best thing we did for Katie was take her to a homeopathic vet. His name is Dr. Will Falconer, he has a great website and he really seems like the stereotypical holistic doctor, long gray beard, soft, kind voice, and he's super nice. Homeopathy is really different, he looks at the animal and treats them as a whole rather than the specific illness. I actually read a book about homeopathy before we went, so I had some idea of what to expect, it really is completely different than going to a regular vet or doctor! With Katie he was concerned that she has always been anxious and sometimes fearful/nervous (weird for a lab), so he chose remedies that addressed that more than cancer specifically, the idea being that if you make the animal's system function properly they fight off illness on their own- even cancer! He told me a couple weeks ago, that Katie has been an ideal patient, she really responded to the remedy he gave her and he thinks her system really has fought off the cancer and it's gone! Pretty cool stuff! She also isn't as anxious or nervous anymore, which is super cool too- and really, really interesting!