You have to stop by my Sister-in-law's blog and check out her amazing talent...she brought our kids to life through her lens and finally captured their sweet personalities and curiosity. I have such a hard time catching these moments and when I do it's most likely on my iPhone and one or both of the kids are just a blur. These pictures are so special to us especially because there are so many with our sweet Sydney.
Here is the link to Rebecca Jex Photography
Here is a little update on Sydney- we took her to the LSU Veterinary Oncology clinic in mid July, just days after we got the news of her cancer. They ran bloodwork, biopsies, and aspirations of her organs. We decided the visit to LSU was necessary because they are able to do more intensive testing than our local vet in order to determine the severity of the cancer. We were very prepared for the worst and although we confirmed the bad news, it could have been worse news. She has malignant Mast Cell tumors, some external (how we discovered the cancer) and some internal. For most dogs, the underlying cause of the tumors is not known. Mast cell tumors have 3 grades, with grade I being the least aggressive and grade III being highly aggressive tumors. The bad news- she is Grade III. The tumors will eventually spread to her lymph nodes, liver, spleen, and bone marrow. As of now it's only in her lymph nodes, not good but better than being in her organs. Chemo was the only option at this stage and after 12 rounds, they told us it would just be slowing down the cancer and there is no way to cure it. She will experience pain as the tumors spread whether she does Chemo or not, basically it would just be prolonging the inevitable. So after much consideration we decided against Chemo. We don't want her to be in pain any longer than she has to be. I believe they told us she might have 4-6 months without Chemo and 6-12 months with Chemo. Zach said it best, in a human you would fight for every additional day, within reason, because they are developing relationships but with a dog it's just us being selfish because we want them here with us. I remember when Zach and I started dating they told Randa (his mom) she had 2 years to live due to the aggressiveness of her cancer....over the next 7 years she saw us graduate college, law school, and get married. So who knows the timeline for our sweet Syd, but to help fight the secondary effects of the tumor we are giving her prednisone, Benadryl, Pepcid, and a steroid 2x daily.
I am including so much info because they say this type of cancer is very common in dogs and Mast Cell tumors account for 20% of tumors found in dogs. So if your dog has a growth, always biopsy just in case!
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