Wichita Chronicles Part 3

Wichita has been doing great!  He passed his Canine Good Citizen test in November and he'll begin therapy dog classes in January.

But a little before Thanksgiving, I saw a little bump on Wichita's side. It was small, about the size of a pencil eraser, but sometimes it would shrink and be almost too small to find. Other times it would get bigger again. I tried to take pictures of the bump, but it was so little, it wasn't really visible in any of the pictures. So off to the vet we went (again). Dr. Weisz did a find needle aspiration and looked at the cells from the lump under the microscope. It was a mast cell tumor. Mast cell tumors are pretty unpredictable and they can be benign or they can be malignant and extremely aggressive. I have a friend whose dog had a mast cell tumor when he was a year old and never had an issue again. I also have a friend whose dog had a mast cell tumor and she died of mast cell cancer just a couple of months later. Yikes!

First step for Wichita was to remove the tumor. But it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when I took him in, so Dr. Weisz scheduled surgery for the next Thursday and said we'd need to give Wichita Benedryl and Pepcid until the surgery. Mast cell tumors are made of mast cells which are part of the immune system and they can release histamine (hence the size change). If a mast cell tumor is big enough or aggressive enough, it can release so much histamine, that it can cause anaphylactic shock! Dr. Weisz also warned me that although the tumor was small, mast cell tumors are often locally aggressive, so when removing them, they always take wide margins to have a better chance of getting all of the abnormal cells. So she planned to take 3 cm on each side of the tumor, that would mean about a 5 inch incision!

Big incision

I took Wichita in for surgery on Thursday and everything went well. He got lots of love from the Allandale staff and they made sure to stitch up the big incision really well. I tried not to think about the histopathlogy report since it would be 5-10 business days before we'd get the results. We needed to keep Wichita fairly calm for about 10 days to avoid putting stress on the stitches and incision. That's not easy with a young, active dog! He never seemed to feel any pain even though the incision was so big.

 

I took Wichita to work with me the day after his surgery, clearly he wasn't feeling too bad. Lots of students came by to see him. This is one of my TAs, Ka'ohi, doing one of Wichita's favorite tricks with him. 

They gave us carprofen for pain, and we gave it to him for a few days, but I'm not sure he needed it. Wichita did not have to wear a cone, but he did have to wear a t-shirt to keep him from scratching at the incision. He didn't mind wearing t-shirts at all. I did catch him trying to scratch at the incision a couple of times, so when he was home alone, I put a bootie on his back foot so he couldn't scratch much.

Wichita scratched one of his stitches loose, luckily the incision was already healing well so it wasn't a big deal.

On Friday, 8 days after surgery, we got the histopathlogy report. All of the abnormal cells were removed with good margins!  And the mitotic index was a 2 which is very good! Mitotic index is a scale from 1 to 10 that measures how quickly cells are dividing. Cancer cells divide really quickly and very aggressive cancer cells divide crazy fast. A mitotic index of 5 or below is considered good for a mast cell tumor and no further treatment is generally recommended. So Wichita's mitotic index of 2, was great news!

Yesterday Wichita got his stitches taken out and Dr. Weisz said everything looks good and he's cleared for all activity (even swimming)! He does have a pretty huge scar that one friend said looks like "an alien worm coming out of his side" But his hair will grow back soon and hopefully the big scar won't be super noticeable...and even if it is, oh well, at least he's healthy!

hopefully when his fur grows back the scar won't be so noticeable

alien worm scar

We will always have to watch for lumps and bumps and get them checked out quickly because often (but not always) dogs who get one mast cell tumor will get more. But with his super short fur, bumps are very easy to see & feel on Wichita.

Katie

Katie & Connor Christmas 2012

Life is shaping up to be a little different this year, and I probably won't be racing as much as usual. Since life is kind of focusing on Katie and Connor right now, I guess the blog can too.

Katie started having tiny little nosebleeds in November and then on Jan. 17th she had a major one, Jeff took her to the vet the next day and they told him nosebleeds in dogs are not normal and often are caused by major issues. We took her to the specialist on Jan 25th and after looking at her and hearing about her symptoms he told us Katie definitely has nasal cancer, they could do a CT scan to see the size and extend of the tumor. Then he said "you're looking at about 9-18 months" I said "that's without any treatment, right?" He looked at me sadly and said, "No that's WITH radiation treatment". We were devastated. We took Katie home and started reading and researching trying to figure out what to do. We decided we didn't want to do radiation (the side effects are pretty bad), and since we weren't going to do treatment there wasn't much point in doing the CT scan. We also learned that it's very normal for a dog with nasal cancer to seem perfectly healthy and happy until the very end. Katie certainly didn't seem sick, aside from the nosebleeds.

From facebook on Jan. 26th: "We found out yesterday that Katie has nasal cancer. Even with chemo/radiation the prognosis is bad (9-18 months), so I think we're going to enjoy whatever time we get with her and spoil the heck out of her. With no treatment life expectancy is about 3-6 months (but Katie will probably do better than that, she's tough). She's not in any pain and feels fine right now. So if I'm not my typical smiley self for the next few months you'll all know why, this is truly heartbreaking for both Jeff and me."

The outpouring of support from friends and family was overwhelming! I started to reframe the situation a little bit. I wanted to really appreciate and enjoy our time with Katie but that's hard to do that when you feel really sad. Plus, I think dogs are really good at picking up on how we feel and we didn't want to give Katie sad vibes. She was still our same Katie, energetic and always ready to GO! So we wanted to let her have as much fun as possible for as long as possible! It got a little easier when the medication and supplements stopped her nosebleeds (this is probably temporary, but we'll enjoy it while we can!). 

Connor and Katie used to love to run with me, but when Connor started to slow down to the point he couldn't really run anymore, I stopped taking both of them. On Feb. 1st I decided to see if Katie was still strong enough to run, Jeff kept Connor occupied and I planned to take Katie out for 1/4 to 1/2 mile if she could do it. 1 mile later we got back home and Katie was one very happy dog! So I decided to set a goal for us.

From facebook on Feb. 1st: "It's good to have a goal. Katie wanted a goal, so I told her as long as she's healthy enough and still feeling good we'll run the Petco 5K9 Run in May. Neither of my dogs have ever run a race (which is weird because they used to run with me all the time). Katie seems happy and excited about running in a race!"

WalkRunWag asked for ambassadors to promote the run in each city, I sent them our story and they said we'd make great ambassadors! Then I decided since we're ambassadors and this is my biggest goal race for the year (yes, I just said a 5K fun run is my biggest event of the year!), we should fundraise for the event, especially since the money goes to Austin Pets Alive! an awesome local organization.

So far Katie is having the best time training, and seems to be loving all the attention and fame that comes with being a WalkRunWag Ambassador! She even has her own facebook page now.

I really hope that we get to run the 5K9 Run in May, but if we don't, at least we know we've made the most of our time with Katie. 

Please know that the support of our family and friends means the world to Jeff, Connor, Katie, & me right now. We truly appreciate each and every one of you! THANK YOU!!