Emmett is in remission! He's in his third week of chemotherapy. He will continue the weekly regimen until about 8-12 weeks, when it starts to decrease in frequency. After 16 weeks it is done once a month, hopefully for a long, long time. We also typed his lymphoma. There are 2 types, B cell and T cell. I remember learning in school that B=Bad and T=Terrible, as in, neither one is good, but T is the worse kind to have. The median survival times are markedly less for T cell lymphoma. And Emmett ... Read more »
Blog
Tip of the day
Here's a helpful tip for everyone: 1. If you have a brachycephalic breed dog (pug, bulldog, Boston terrier, etc) you need to be very careful with their eyeballs since they are particularly susceptible to eye injury. 2. This means, you probably shouldn't let them roll around in the sandbox. 3. If they do roll around in the sandbox, and you notice a ton of sand in their eye, instead of wiping it out and thus dragging it all over the eyeball, rinse it out with saline. Better yet, call your ... Read more »
Here’s how you can inspire confidence
I saw a dog in today who had something funny going on with his eyeball. The medication that I would normally send home is one we don't use too often, and when I grabbed the last remaining box on the shelf I saw it had expired sometime last year. Great. So I asked my tech to bring the dog back to the owners while I figured out what to get for them. I don't script out eye medications too frequently so I wanted to make sure the prescription I wrote was for a human drug they would be able to fill ... Read more »
Why dogs are better than people, part 32
Before I had kids, life was much more exciting for Emmett. We went to dog park all the time, I bought little dog cookies from specialty dog bakeries, I used to nap on his belly. Life was good. Then I had my daughter, and things got a lot more boring. We hung out at the house. He had to eat grocery store treats. I napped with the baby. It wasn't that Emmett was less loved, or less important, or even that I thought things like specialty dog cookies were unnecessary now that I had a real kid. ... Read more »
Happy Mother’s Day!
To all the pet moms out there: We ply them with food and treats and toys, spend hours grooming them and rubbing their bellies. We may not get any handmade cards or macaroni necklaces in return, but we do get this: pure, unadulterated, unconditional love. It's the best gift they can give, and the primary joy of having a pet. Have a Happy Mother's Day! ... Read more »
That sound you hear is my heart breaking
I was a very sensitive kid. So much, in fact, that my mother only got through "Rock a Bye Baby" one time because I cried so hard at the idea of "down will come baby cradle and all." What a mean lullaby. I couldn't watch Road Runner cartoons because I was so sympathetic to the coyote- he wasn't evil, he was just a carnivore. He just wanted to eat. And Tom and Jerry? Awful. Poor Tom. I'd cry every time I had to watch him get disemboweled, electrocuted, or decapitated. Man, that was a sadistic ... Read more »
Least favorite things
I could lie and tell you of all the things I do at work, I like them all equally well. Sadly, I'm a crummy liar. I have definite preferences, as do most vets I know. If you figured those preferences out early on and don't mind putting yourself through the wringer to be able to do just that for the rest of your career, then congratulations, you're a specialist. The rest of us have to muddle through the stuff we don't like in order to do the things we do. If you're really lucky, you end up working ... Read more »
The cat food experiment, Part 2- or, uh oh
So the last you heard of me and my cat food experimenting, I had to give all the freeze dried food to Emmett and was tackling my bag of raw food patties. The Nature's Variety brand makes feeding raw food very convenient, if you're not into preparing all that stuff yourself. It appealed to me for several reasons: 1. You can buy it in little 1 ounce medallions, or larger 3 ounce patties. 2. The meat is ground up, so you don't have big bone chunks floating around in the stuff. 3. They actually ... Read more »
A new reality
I am very fortunate to be in the position that I am, as a veterinarian, with a sick pet. I know I have more access than most to specialized care. I am very grateful to my colleague and boss, one of my clinic's owners, who also works at an internal medicine facility and is both a very confident diagnostician and very good to his friends and colleagues. On Friday at 4:30 pm, the lab faxed over the pathology results: DIAGNOSIS: LYMPHOSARCOMA. There's never a good time to get that result, but of ... Read more »
An unplanned entry
When Mulan was sick last year, the simple act of petting her was a stressful event. There was always a new lump, some sore spot, something to make me nervous and want to do tests and see what was going on. It was always such a relief to pet Emmett, so sturdy and unproblematic, to scratch him under the chin and not feel enlarged nodes, to thump him the way you thump big dogs in greeting and not worry about hurting him. And after Mulan died, under the grief and sorrow there was also a weight ... Read more »
