All clear!!

I'm thrilled to say that Boris' chest xrays came back clear... no sign of lung metastasis!!! We celebrated the good news by getting the dogs a bacon cheesburger from Wendy's followed by a nice walk at the park. The dogs were tired from the day's excitement when we got home and were pretty much passed out for the entire afternoon. Ah, yes.... tired dogs are good dogs!

I have to go find out more about pamidronate. Boris' oncologist told me that this is another treatment option to consider at this time. It supposedly helps slow down tumor growth in bone and prevents the bone from getting destroyed by tumor, and this appears to be the case in human studies. Now the catch is that there are no actual formal studies on this in dogs yet, but it appears that about 50% of dogs are helped by this medicine as a preventive measure against the spread of further bone tumors. For the other 50%, it does nothing. All in all, those are compelling odds, so I have to look into this and see whether this is something we want to pursue with Boris. It would require two IV treatments, two weeks apart. These IV treatments last two hours, so it requires that the dog be still for that long. The oncologist tells me that Boris is difficult about IV treatments (gee, now there's a surprise!), so it's not going to be a total piece of cake for him. But still, a couple of hours of unpleasantness for him for the chance of helping prevent the spread of further bone tumors is probably well worth it. So in addition to worrying about lung metastasis (which is most common) and metastasis to other bones, we have to worry about metastasis to soft tissue. This disease is more hideous than I could have imagined. That's what makes it all the more sweet each time Boris gets a clear xray. Any piece of good news is more than welcome around here.