Celebrating Earth Day

Seeing life through the eyes of a wildlife biologist, every day is earth day to me...except that today, I brought my good camera on our evening hike.

And since I had the good camera out, I tried to get a few decent photos of Danee.

I've been so focused on Holly these last few months, that I thought that I would at least focus my camera lens more on Danee tonight. It was a good try.

Even in Death, There is life

Last week my friend was burning a large slash pile and it got away from her. Before the firefighters could come and put it out, it had burned half of her field and was teetering on the edge the forest. Scary! But for some wonderful reason, the fire went completely around Casey's grave at the top of the field, preserving the beautiful spring flowers that just came in bloom. Casey is growing some lovely flowers this year. Even in death, there is life :)

Thank You!

I want to say a big THANK YOU to all of my friends, family and supporters. I cannot say how grateful I am for all the emails, the messages, the notes, the donations and the support during the last few months. It was hard, but with everyone behind us we have come out the other side smiling :) I truly hope this chapter in her life is over. Thank you everyone!

The New Normal

On Monday, Holly graduated from having to wear her cone during the day while I'm at work. She is cone-free and her burn is 100% healed :)
 

 

During the last week and a half the skin looked totally healed, but she just wouldn't leave it alone if she wasn't wearing her cone. In fact, if I took her cone off, she would get frustrated...knowing she wasn't allowed to lick her skin, but she so desperately wanted to. It was interesting that by just putting the cone back on, she would relax and stop obsessing over wanting to lick it. Clearly there was some sensation there she didn't like, so even though it looked healed, it wasn't. Plus I was still keeping it moist with Aquafor...which is greasy and aparently it also tastes good. Just by putting it on, she wanted to immediately lick it off. 

The only thing I'm putting on it now is sunscreen. The bald area is just that, totally bald. It's as large as my hand, baby soft, and very sensitive. The last thing she needs is more skin damage due to a sunburn.

It's been 5 weeks since radiation ended. It's been 9 weeks since radiation started. It's been 11 weeks since the surgical removal of her tumor. And life is finally getting back to normal again. We are back to our daily forest romps after work and both of them are back to spending their days sun worshiping in the yard. Holly has even done some agility at the arena where my agility equipment is at for the winter...which she had an absolute doing :) I'm so grateful to have her back living her normal life again.

Next week she has a recheck on the surgical site and skin. The week after she gets a full body check with a tune-up (chiro/acu). In June she will have x-rays of her chest to check for metastisis...as if the cancer were to have spread, despite our best efforts, it will be to her lungs. So she will get chest x-rays every 4-6 months for the rest of her life. 

I have chosen to not pursue metronomic chemotherapy for Holly at this time. I could write an entire post on the discussion over it, and maybe I will...it's very interesting and I bet it could help out the next person who has a dog with a similar diagnosis. There is practically no hard data on myxosarcoma outcomes, but I needed to take what information I was given, decide and be okay with my choice...no matter what the outcome is tomorrow.

I hope that all of our future posts are of happy fun things instead of anything associated with cancer. Life marches on and we are going enjoy the rest of our gorgeous spring weather...together:)

The Indignities of Holidays

It's all fun and games til the rabbit ears come out ;)