Older pup Madison (the one who moved to Australia with us) was diagnosed with lymphoma in May. It was b-cell with a concurrent t-zone.
I'm sure you're familiar with what b-cell means for dogs, in terms of timelines based upon treatment method picked. The t-zone is considered an indolent lymphoma for which there isn't a treatment but with which dogs live for years (as the oncologist and vet both said, it's almost assuredly not the thing that's going to catch up with her).
Anyway, we decided to proceed with what's called the CHOP chemo protocol (it's 4 cycles of vincristine, cytoxin, vincristine, doxorubicin over what's been about a 5 month period). The CHOP protocol originated at the University of Wisconsin, and we got really lucky in that our oncologist's role before coming to the pet surgical hospital was as head of the oncology department at Wisconsin's animal school.
Median remission time for this protocol is around a year or so.
Madison was diagnosed to be in remission in June, and that was confirmed by a flow cytometry in the end of July.
Then, about a month ago, Madison started having an issue where she was randomly losing control of her sphincter muscle and making small discharges.
Thank god I have OCD when Madison shows 'signs' of something wrong, because the oncologist took a look and noticed a nodule on her anal gland.
Fortunately, x-rays and ultrasound showed that it has NOT metastisized. There were some tiny numbs showing on her spleen, but they were not seen as an issue or being out of the ordinary for a dog Madison's age and will be monitored by very periodic ultrasound moving forward.
It turns out the nodule on her anal gland is 0.50cm, and recent studies have shown that where a nodule is less than 3.00cm and there has been no spread, average life expectancy is 3 or so years.
Long story short, her last chemo treatment is on her 11th birthday of October 8 (assuming weekly bloodwork shows white cell count is good for the last two weekly treatments), and the surgery to remove the nodule on her anal gland will come around two weeks later if conditions permit.
Then we go from there.
BUT . . . right now, Madison is going great. Probably the best she's been doing in 6 months or so. Her spirits are through the roof. She's literally picking fights with our Frenchie, grabbing her toys and waving them in her face to get her to play. It's so cute.
(we are debating adding immunotherapy after all of this, starting in mid November . . . it's still sort of experimental with dogs, but initial studies have shown that adding immunotherapy to CHOP adds to a dogs life expectancy)
