One Month........

Its been one month since Jack had his surgery. He's doing great. Still loving life!! We continue with the herbs and supplements and just pray that they are helping him out! Eventually I will do a x-ray to see what's going on inside of him, but may wait another couple months. It still kills me that this happened to him, but I'm trying to stay very positive and enjoy every day with him.

2 Week Check Up

Jack continues to do great! He had his two week check up and was cleared for regular activity. His incision looks great. The first thing we did when we got home was play ball :-). We also saw the holistic vet and pretty much are going with what we have been doing but have taken one item out (Si Miao San) and added two items (Xue Yu Tang and Tan Yu Tang). I've also added EGCG and Turmeric). We will now take it a day at a time and enjoy life to the fullest!!

Bad News :-(

Well I finally heard from the oncologist....the news was not good, the melanoma has spread. While I prepared myself for this, it still is a crushing blow.....I was so hoping for a miracle. My family and I are crushed. But we had a good cry and now are going to focus on holisitc medicine and do everything we can to make his time with us as long as possible and as full of life as possible. He continues to do well after the surgery!

Home from Surgery

He had surgery to remove the growth in his lung on Thursday...they also removed one lympth node. I'll have the results from those sometime next week. They told me he would not be able to come home until Saturday morning at the earliest.....he proved them wrong and came home Friday late afternoon :-). He definitely is sore and is moving slowing but is eating and acting fine. He is on restricted activity for 2 weeks so that should be fun!! I've told the oncologist that I just can't afford to do anything else (really couldn't afford what I have done) and that just kills me! :-( I'm hoping for good news next week! He continues to amaze me!

Results of last X-Ray

So its been another month and Jack went in for another x-ray to see how the spot on his lung looked. Overall the news was good, its still there, maybe just a bit bigger (a bit over 2 cm) and no other new spots/growths. So I went ahead and had a CT done to make sure there wasn't anything else anywhere else. It came back clean except for that one growth. Soooo it looks like he will have surgery on Thursday and they say prognosis is good. Here's keeping that hope!!

A Year Has Past......

Well November 19th was a year from when we first found the cancer and December 1st was a year from when we first started treating (his first surgery). He had a check up with his oncologist on December 2nd and I was excited about this, but nervous to! He continues to look great!! The Doctor agreed, healthy, eyes looked great, no problem with lymph nodes...so off to X-rays. When the doctor came out I could tell that it wasn't going to be all good news :-( Jack has one small, oval spot on his lung. The vet said that this isn't what normal metastasized melanoma looks like, which is usually many and round. But because he is on the melanoma vaccine they aren't sure whether this is the vaccine keeping it down to one or if this is something new with the lung. She said these are common but because dogs usually aren't getting periodic x-rays they aren't found until its to late. She said that this one is in the perfect spot to successfully treat if it is purely a "lung" issue. She wanted to wait 4 weeks to see what happens with it. So he goes back on 12/30 and we'll know more then. So not the news we hoped for but I know we need to keep the faith and know that we have to cherish the fact that he is with us over a year later and continue to cherish each day with him!



I also spoke to his holistic vet and he has an appointment with her on 12/7 to see what our next course of action is there. I'll post more at the end of the month and hopefully the news is positive!!

Another Milestone!!

Well Jack had his 3 month check up today. His lymph nodes feel fine and his x-ray was clean!! So we will keep with what we have been doing and his next check up will be in December, where he will also get his 6 month Melanoma booster.

I asked the oncologist when I could breathe a little easier and she said a year after treatment started. I asked if that meant surgery, she said yes. So the first surgery was 12/1/09 and his second was 12/8/09. So we will have a party on 12/1/10!!!