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Teatime
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‘February 4th 2011 was a pleasant day and the 5th birthday of Carmel, Roman and Shira. By chance (so it seemed) at teatime we found all three of them sitting upright on an old mattress with their mother Paschale; it was a perfect picture but without a camera to hand it remains just a lovely snapshot in my mind. They all appeared happy and healthy but one week later Shira was again picked on by one of the young males and, when she responded, took a snap and a lot of aggressive threatening behaviour from him before fleeing into a corner of the ‘dog room’.
After chastising the errant male I went in to Shira to see if any bites needed attention; there was nothing much but she was shaking and upset and as I went to comfort her with a cuddle I was alarmed to find a number of large lumps around her neck. I tried to rationalise this by thinking they were formed by pressure during the spat between the two dogs but I felt they were something more serious although I had no idea just what that could be. It was Saturday lunchtime, the vet’s surgery was closed but I ran round to the kitchen where Michael was and told him we had to get Shira seen immediately. Michael had just returned a borrowed car as we had no transport of our own at the time and checked out Shira before calling the vet to see if I was alarmed for nothing, perhaps the bumps would go down in a while? He didn’t like the look of things any more than I did and called Dr John who agreed to meet us at his surgery in a couple of hours. Our friend with the car kindly brought it back to us and while we waited we hoped Shira would get back to normal, she seemed calmer and ate a small lunch with the others and showed no further signs of distress. By the time we saw Dr John we were hopeful all would be well but we were dismayed to see his concern the moment he felt the lumps and told us that he would take tests in the hope there was some minor cause. Dr John duly ran all the tests and then told us he feared it was lymphoma and watched us as our faces fell and a low moan escaped from my constricted throat; this word sounded very grim, another deadly disease? The vet at once tried to comfort us, telling us not to worry, lots could be done and it might not be what we dreaded; a biopsy would have to be taken of course to confirm. We had been down this road before and went home very dejected and for me, well, I followed my usual way and trawled the internet for information, preferably of the hopeful kind. Far from it – the prognosis for lymphoma was very bad and there was that word again, the ‘I’ word –‘incurable’. If untreated the dog would have a very short time to live or suffer the after-effects of aggressive drug programmes which would further weaken the animal. Some veterinary sites did counsel that there may be other causes for lumps, benign cysts for example, but the descriptions and photos on the ‘net’ just looked like Shira’s condition to me.’ |
Veterinary care in Cyprus
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This was our alarming initiation into the condition of canine lymphoma but after this first shock we were made aware that on this small holiday island of Cyprus there are advanced veterinary facilities and great vets. Dr John, already and excellent vet, consulted experts in this type of cancer and worked out a drug protocol for Shira that he did not give us false hope would cure her but was confident would prolong her life and relieve the symptoms.
Shira had 3 cycles of chemotherapy over the next year, mostly administered intravenously. The procedure took several hours on each one of 3 days over 3 weeks and the drug combinations varied in each cycle. After the very first treatment, when just one drug was used, Shira’s lumps all but disappeared and she enjoyed a full and happy return to normal life for a few months. She showed no signs of any side effects. The second phase required a combination of stronger drugs but again she suffered no side effects but the lumps did not entirely disappear. The third cycle was less successful but Shira moved up to Michael’s little house in the mountains where she raced about madly and freely in the fields, seeming totally healthy and happy. The main drugs that had been used were: Doxorubicin (solely and in combi) Vincristin (in combi) Prednisolone ( at the end used only as palliative care to relieve the terminal symptoms). We were not content to do nothing ourselves and went to a great deal of trouble to import more Transfer Factor and reintroduced the ‘creamy mongoose’ regime of cottage cheese, linseed oil and a cocktail of immune-boosting dietary aids. We have no certain proof but we feel that Immune Therapy gave Shira the best chance of fighting the disease. As with Rowan, she remained active and happy until the last 3 weeks when she deteriorated rapidly and began to suffer from hyphema (blood in the eye), became weak and obviously in pain. After a year the rogue cells had become resistant to the available drugs and any higher doses of chemo would cause further risk to the good cells. The end had come and we again said goodbye to one of our darlings. As with Rowan, she had not outlived the median survival time but the quality of life Shira enjoyed in that last year was quite miraculous to us. |
