Bling for meeeeee!

So I turned 30 yesterday...eeeeep! J/k the world didn't end so it's all good right? So because of my Birthday I felt the need to buy myself some bling for the occasion. Normally I pick up some fake sparkles on clearance, but this year I found some real sparkles on clearance! Score!!!

Above is a pic of it. It has to be sized since I have oh so huge size 8.5 fingers. I guess stores do not carry anything but a size 7. Which is annoying because I personally know many people who do not wear a 7 except my mom. I had ordered a ring for her and the place I ordered it from only carried size 6.50 everything else had to be sized up. Heck even the sales lady couldn't fit it on her finger! Anywho...in 2 weeks I wear it and show it off :) Sure the diamonds are so darn small you don't know what they are, but hell I bought them and they are my first diamonds so it's ok. It sure does sparkle nice and that is all that matters!

Other then that I went in and had a mani and had a nice lunch, dinner and shopping excursion.

Here's hoping to a better 2013. 2012 sucked!

Rest Easy My Love....

For the last week I have been trying to come up with the words to say good bye to my girl...Really there are no words for something like this....


Last week Athena was getting increasingly worse. She had more bad days then good and her coughing was more persistent. And when she looked at me I just knew it was her last week. She had lost a lot of weight to the point where i could see every back bone she had and her ribs and she just looked tired.

I met up with an online friend who took our pictures and I will treasure them forever...

Ack...even now the tears are welling up.I picked her ashes up on Saturday. I wasn't sure if I should get them back, but I think I just needed too..

Fair well to the best Frisbee dog

My super hero who was always around when I needed you!

To the best Model there was....

Mommie loves you and will forever miss you by my side. Give Granma and all the other family we've lost lots of loves and comfort.

Ok time to go cry again....*sigh*

My Amazing Friends...

Having friends in your life is always a must, but having amazing friends in your life is really, in my opinion, a blessing...

Shortly after Athena was diagnosed a group of my friends got together and bought me this nose print necklace....It's not any nose print it's Athena's *tears* Rockmyworld on etsy is amazing!

And then another friend from the same group had a lady she knows paint my sweet girl! It looks even more amazing in person!

Ack she did such a great job and even put a frisbee in the picture for her! Here is the original pic i had sent to her for inspiration. This is the lady who did the painting. Her work is amazing http://www.jerieartz-artzart.blogspot.com/

I also had a friend do her paw prints for me too. Now I can remember my sweet girl forever...Now if only I can somehow cast her ears? LOL

I have some amazing friends!

Craft Time

My job has been a little pretty much a pain in my ass stressful as of late. So I thought to get into the holidays and to save my self money I would make everyone's gifts this year. I'm not sure if it really is saving me money per say since I keep buying yarn, but I am enjoying the things I'm making AND I even was paid for 2 items I made on request!


First up...baby booties with matching hat.A friends niece is having a baby and asked me to make her some booties and hat.

A Sheepskin dog bed with fleece back to it for easy cleaning. This was for my friends little bichon who doesn't handle the cold well anymore. He peacefully sleeps his days away now with no shivering! The fur is actually a dark brown, but the lights in my office with the crappy phone camera made it look weird.

A beanie to keep my friends grandson warm through his battle with testicular cancer at age 20.

Hat and Scarf- A gift to my friends son who LOVES hats and scarfs. He told his momma the other day "Athena doesn't get to wear it anymore!" LOL. Athena modeling the projects.

And now I am working on a blanket for my sister who has ovarian cancer :( I should finish it soon. Going on a road trip with the dogs to WA to see my aunt for Thanksgiving next week so I will have lots of down time to get it done! I was also comissioned to make 2 more sets of booties! So I will be working on those as well before January. PLUS the hats I have in mind for the rest of the family. Good thing I crochet fast!

OH and Gifts for my aunts newfies...They will get drool bibs for xmas. I'll be working on a design when I am there next week then my mom will embroider some sayings on it like "Drool is sexy." Hoffa is not a huge drooler, but dozer is always soggy haha.

As you can see Drool City!

I hate being an Adult

Can I just run away to a time where I did not have to make hard decisions? Pretty please?

Athena was really restless last night and is starting to have a hard time breathing. At one point she was laying on my pillows trying to get as close to be as she could. Generally that means she is not feeling good. Although she is eating and seems to have energy she gets winded very easy and almost whines when you touch her tummy. She gets bloated very easy now after she eats. I swear I hate making a decision, but how long do you let a pet suffer? she will never show she is in pain and that is the hard part. She shows me discomfort by being more clingy then usual and that is about it. She has been very clingy to me more so then usual.


She has been doing decent up until now. I do have her on prednisone once a day. For the first week she was on it the medication did take down her lymphnodes to  normal size. However that lasted only a week before they started getting bigger again. Right now the steroids are basically keeping her eating. My mom commented last night about how tired she looks. :(


I'm sitting here feeling like a horrible mom for even thinking of putting her down. Does she have energy to run around the yard? Yes, but a short trip to the pet food store had her very winded.....Does she eat? It really depends on the day if she eats well or not. What concerns me the most is her breathing. She takes shallow breaths and sounds like she has bronchitis. That wheezing forceful sounding breaths. 


Do I regret not doing chemo? Heck no. She has lasted well past any doc told me she would! I was told 6 weeks without treatment. Here it is close to 23 weeks after i found the nodes swollen and she is still here. And really i only started the prednisone bout 4 weeks ago.

Stupid cancer...making me make a hard decision in life...

Supplements

I never thought figuring out supplements would be a chore with Athena. She always has had a iron stomach. So I thought adding Mushrooms to her diet wouldn't be such a big deal. I did a fair amount of research on mushroom supplements for dogs with cancer and it looked like a excellent idea. Turns out she HATES the supplements from the vet and they really do not agree with her. To the point where she was not eating her meals because of them.

So after a long phone convo with her new vet, who i love btw, we decided to take her off the mushrooms and go back to the beginning. So back to her normal food with wet and her immune support powered supplement from the vet. She tolerates the immune support very good and the vet said this supplement is very important for Athena and her immune system.

 I also wanted to put her on a anti inflammatory for her joints and to hopefully help any inflammation to the nodes because of her cancer.  So my vet recommended Boswellia. So off to the health food store in my city. They had a Boswellia and turmeric blend capsule. My vet had told me that turmeric would be excellent for cancer. So the capsule was hitting two birds with one stone so to speak. And let me tell you this stuff is amazing! She is doing wonderful and even demanded we play Frisbee every day this week despite the heat! I started her on them sat night and I really think they are helping her a lot.

Then we have the Yunnan baiyao and arnica for her random bruising. The bruising is so odd and the vet has no idea why she is bruising other then maybe she is knocking the swollen glands around while playing and it pops something in there.

I think after this next pay day I will order a different type of mushroom supplement. There are powder kinds and a liquid kind. I'm debating on which one to get. The powder is 3/4tsp once a day and the liquid is a ton of drops 2x a day. I'm no so sure drops are a good idea in the wee hours of the morning when I make her breakfast. I would try the mushrooms the vet gave me again but i worry about her upset tummy and they are 4 big chewable pills a day and she won't eat them with out crushing them up very small and mixing with something very smelly.

She is slowing down a bit. When I come home at lunch she is unimpressed and wants to go back to bed and sometimes she just doesn't want her snacks. But so far she is still eating all her meals, still wants her chews and squeaks her chews and wants her walks and play time. So really I'm happy she is doing good! My previous vets scared me to the point that I truly thought she would be gone by now. 8 weeks and counting since I noticed her swollen glands and she is still doing amazing! Take that vet who thought holistic care was a waste of money and would kill my dog.

Each meal she gets:

EVO grain free
Grain free wet to mix the supplements up and add more moisture to her diet. sometimes i mix in some freeze dried raw or frozen raw.
Omega 3 oil/salmon oil with low omega 6 (omega 6 bad for cancer)
Standard Process: Immune Support 3/4tsp
Boswellia/turmeric capsule
Yunnan Bai Yao and Arnica as needed for bruising.

Then her snacks are homemade cookies with cottage cheese and her bullies or tooth chews.

Appointment

So i guess we had a good appt with this oncologist...He was nice, but very clinical. I'm sorta annoyed that his body language changed when i told him i didn't want to go the chemo route. He still explained the different types of chemo i could do "to keep my options open" . He said there was really no point in doing the b or t cell test because the treatments for both are the same and because of that he recommends putting the $ into treatment vs more tests.

Multi drug chemo would be 6months of treatment and ~7k for her and even with this it's maybe a year they would live past. NOT a year from remission but a year from when they dog was diagnosed. He said in his experience less than 25% of dogs last more then a year with favorable B cell lymphoma. However 90% of dogs achieve remission with the chemo

Single drug chemo would be every 3 weeks for a total of 5 sessions would be ~ 3k with a outcome of 6-9 months from date of diagnosis. On the estimate it shows 4 drugs that she would have to take at home to counter act or battle side affects of this chemo.

Prednisione would be 1-2mo from date of diagnosis.

Full diagnostic work up if i wanted too would be about 1600 bucks (ouch). I decided to go ahead and do the blood and urine panel to see if it has hit her organs yet and to give a baseline. She was NOT happy about being separated from me and barreled out of the back dragging the nurse in tow. She didnt even have time to put the pee vial down LOL.

Three things that put me off was that i felt like he was judging me on not wanting to do chemo. maybe it's because i was starting to get upset. Two he said that diet and supplements would not help her. I dont get why vets are so anti supplements. We humans use them for our bodies why not animals? And three i had asked him since she was acting not sick if i should start prednisione now or if i should wait for symptoms to appear. He didnt answer me directly on this all he said is if i wanted to start treatment, he then pointed to the chemo, i should start it right away. I almost felt pressured to do what he wanted vs what i wanted.

I will follow up with the vet i met with last sat after her blood results come back and see what she thinks. She seems to be the most compassionate and understanding of my decision. So even though she is in the city i think ill keep going to see her.

As for athena...She was a rockstar in the waiting room. I swear she never made me look so good. Being quiet and sitting a my feet. Not jumping all over the tables and barking and being wild beasts like the other dogs. She is still eating, playing and doing her business and acting normal! Love my beasty beast :)

I will be beyond heart broken when her time comes. But i think that i am doing what is best for her. So i will take it day by day and love her through everything.

Ramblings of a stressed out momma

On Friday Dr P called to tell me pricing on finding out if its b cell or t cell and if it had to be a new biopsy. i told her that dr atwater (oncologist she referred me too) was on vacation so i'm going to go see another vet and does holistic work and she said "that is a horrible idea. Holistic care wont do anything for her and you will spend all this money and it wont help her at all" WTF? seriously? so then i started crying and could tell her to fuck off. Who the hell is she to tell me what i'm choosing is good or bad. what i wanted to say is I know this wont cure her. 

Anywho...i had already decided to go see Healthy Pets in sfo   because i had worked with the owner many moons ago when athena was a puppy and he was really the one who inspired me to do so much research into dog food and animal nutrition. Unfortunately Dr Adam was not available, but  Dr Strubel was. So off we went. My brother went with me for support  and to help wrangle her lol. 

i had an amazing vet visit. Dr Strubel was so nice and caring and explained so much about lymphoma. She said its a cancer of the immune system and she has seen many animals with it over the years and it doesn't necessarily mean a death sentence right away. Depending on how fast it is growing really determines the life span. She said the report did say that the there aren't very many abnormal cells and she said this could very well mean she has the slow growing kind. However they'd need to do another needle aspirate to find out. She went over different methods of treating this disease from pretinazone (sp? i know is wrong) to full on chemo and radiation. She said since athena was NOT acting sick and still playing and eating etc that was a very good sign for her prognosis.

She gave me some immune system supplement and suggested a full body supplement too, but they were out. ill prob get this when they get more. She also said it was good she was on grain free and that i wanted to keep her on that and give her as little carbs as possible. Also feed her dark leafy greens such as kale and broccoli and green beans and to steam them and don't give them raw. Also to suggested turmeric and cinnamon and said mixing them in with her cookies i make would be a great way to give her them. I also brought up the fireworks and how she freaks. She gave me some xanax and a scrip for tranqs to use as needed.

the appt was only a half hour but I left feeling confident and informed and felt how everyone should feel about the vet. that they listened and supported you and your pet.Plus she gave me more info my original vet ever did even from the report! 

I already made an appt with an oncologist for Tuesday on this side of the bay, but she recommended someone else whom she works closely with. Part of me wants to cancel and go with who she recommends but the other part of me wants to find someone completely separate. I made an appt with sage centers in Campbell. So i think i'm just going to stick with what i have scheduled. i really want to find out if it's b cell or t cell and really i think the best person to read those results would be an oncologist. 


All the reading in the world wouldn't have given me the peace of mind this Dr strubel did. So glad i went to go see her!

How can such a awesome dog be sick! 

Unfair

It took me a while to find a vet office that I liked and trusted enough with my animals. And honestly I thought that I had found the right place for me and Athena. But after events over the last week I am not so sure anymore.

Last week I was told the sample they took last Monday was not clear enough to read. So I had to bring Athena back in for another needle biopsy. Okay no problem. So we went in on Saturday and she got poked again for slides to go to the lab for her swollen glands. Doc said they'd be back Monday or the latest Tuesday. Tuesday rolls around and I hear nothing. So I call at 2pm  and was told they are in, but the doc has to look at them and will call me back. 5pm rolls around and hear nothing. I wasn't really mad at that point just wanted the results and figured someone would call me first thing today.

So I'm driving home Tuesday from getting dinner and I get a call and it's from the vet office at 5:50 the night before a holiday...It's one of the office techs...calling to tell me Athena has round cell lymphoma and the vet won't be back in until Thursday....I took the news in stride until I hung up the phone then cried all the way home. Then i got pissed. Why the hell was anyone other than the vet calling me to give me this news? esp on the night before they were closed for a day. Seriously? WTF?

The vet basically told me to go see an oncologist for her...I'm not really sure I want to go down the chemo route or just let her live her life as she is now. Is it really worth putting her through 25weeks of chemo only to get 6mo-to a year more? Or maybe just leave her as she is now and get longer. I don't know. The vet didn't give me a stage or how long she could have she only recommended me to a Oncologist. And if I wanted to find out if she has B or T cell then I would have to have additional testing.

This is so unfair. She is a young dog and so healthy and full of life. Blah F you cancer.

Waiting sucks!

I have a hard time waiting or doing things that take a long time to finish. It's one of the reasons I crochet and not knit. It's instant gratification. I can finish a scarf in 2 hours crocheting and knitting...lets just say it probably would never get done.

So waiting to see if the fluid the vet took out of Athena's swollen glands is Lymphoma is becoming one of the worst few days EVER.

I'm hoping with all the fibers in my body that it's just an infection from her bump removal. She's too young to get the big C. She is acting too normal to have the big C.

The vet said Wednesday...It's Wednesday damnit! I want her results!!! If I don't hear back today I swear it will be tequila Wednesday instead of a whole bottle of moscoto Monday.

Ball Hog

Athena seems to think anytime there is a ball around giving it up is one big game. It's about a 10% chance she will give up the ball with out some....well some force..mostly grabbing the ball and trying to shove her head into the pool. Once you get close enough to the water she drops the ball :) Although she will drop the ball consistently when my hands are full with the poop scooper lol. Most of the time when you reach for it she turns her head away or wants you to chase her. But her favorite activity? she will shove her face in front of yours for kisses...all the while taunting you will the ball. The little wench!Love my beast even if she doesn't share very well :)

Best words Eva!

Follicular Cyst!!!!!

Vet called and she said it was a Follicular Cyst! she was confused because it acted like a mast cell at the time...But she said she got all of it and she should heal up and be A ok :) YAY!

Love my beastie :)

Ugh I should have known.....

Yesterday at lunch i noticed a stitch was missing from Athenas wound...I didn't think anything of it she had a zoomie episode day before and thought it was from that. The skin was already mending so i just left it be....

I came home yesterday to her leg without stitches and hanging open...ugh Seriously???!!!! I called the vet at 4:57pm and they told me to come on in and they'd fix it up.

So she got staples this time. I love my dog, I love my dog, I love my dog...right? It's my fault really i should have gotten a cone but she went 4 days with no problems. I even left her over the weekend to do errands and she didn't touch her booobooo.

So now her leg looks like this:

And she is giving me a look like this when the cone is on...

I told my boss I brought her in so I could watch her and he was totally ok with that. I told him I didn't have her cone on because  she isn't licking at the site. He said I should keep it on her because I can't watch her 24/7. Which I understand and when I can't watch her I'll put the cone on, but she can't go in her crate with this huge plastic cone and she just stands there and whines. So I took it off and she is peacefully sleeping in her crate. Maybe at lunch when I go to get more calming pills I'll look for a soft cone so she feels less like the red headed step child!

I would like to say that I LOVE my vet and staff :)

Across the Country we went!

Last month instead of going on a girls trip for my quarterly vacation I helped my aunt move from Florida to Washington. She had been looking to find a job out west for ages and finally she was offered one in a small town on the coast. Getting there was an adventure with one ford freestyle SUV , two humans and two Newfoundland dogs! 


I've had many people ask me "How did you fit them in the car?" Well....like this

One dog on the 3 row seats and one on the floor on a bed. And while it wasn't overly roomy the dogs were perfectly happy. Let me tell you these two are on the go dogs. Even after driving across country in 5 days they STILL wanted to get in the car and GO.

Meet Hoffa...He is such a sweet boy.

And Dozer....his name sure does fit his personality :)

Dozer is the bigger of the two and he is 2 years old and is a wild child! lol He learned that auntie rissa is not all wine and roses and she can and does use the "Mom" voice :).




I had a blast with my aunt and these two and cant wait to bring the beast up to WA once she is healed for some more fun times :) . I have lots of stories from the trip!

Oh Athena...

I think you must have some sort of psychic bond with my savings account...Just when i start to get it built back up you decide to spend it again. Last year it was having a primary molar removed and this year? A mast cell tumor.

I thought it was just another blocked oil gland. It looked and felt just like the one she had last summer. So i just watched it and waited really. Then it got red around the edges. So this morning we made our way to her favortiest place on earth. All was going good. She greeted everyone in the office and even tried to make friends with the house cats. Then after a few pokes and trying to squeeze out what was inside the vet sat back and said "this looks like a mast cell tumor not a cyst." So off we went to the back to have it removed.

Normally i wouldn't go into the back with the vet and tech but after all that poking thinking it was a cyst Athena wanted NOTHING to do with them lol. She planted her feet and refused to move. I guess she was channeling her inner stubborn horse ha. So i went back with her. She was not happy about getting a shot, but soon went under into la la land. The vet said i was more then welcome to stay as long as i didn't pass out. I told her i had seen much worse over the years so i was good to go.

30min and a bunch of stitches later she was stitched up and ready to have her shot back to reality. And my pocket was $400.00 lighter.

Afterward the vet told me that she was confident she got all of the tumor area. And since it was a very small tumor (about 2mm) i shouldn't worry really, but if i want to send it to the lab i could. So i did. Who wouldn't right?  I should get the results back on Sat. Since the bump was close to the edge of her leg and they took a big chunk out it was like she had a mini leg lift :)

She is happy at home recovering from her ordeal and hugging her soft fuzzy blanket LOL

Kids...what i wouldn't do for my beastie!