Just Not Recovering

Rem's just not getting back to looking perky and healthy. He'll does tricks and look interested and accepts goodies, but with low energy output rather than the usual wow-I-love-doing-tricks. No diarrhea or gas yesterday or today, and he was eating OK, but this morning he picked all the chicken bits out of the rice & cottage cheese--not only didn't eat the rice & cc but spit out the parts that were attached to the chicken bits. (Not what he was doing Sat & Sun--ate everything although sedately.)

His weight is down 1.5 pounds from where it's been holding steady since early november--so since Friday he's dropped that much. And he *hasn't* had diarrhea. Doesn't look dehydrated. Wondered whether maybe I'm not feeding him enough--but as I said this morning he's not that interested.

They took blood this morning for a CBC. Vet has to decide whether to do our scheduled adriamycin this afternoon. The quandry is--if he's feeling sick because of the cancer, we definitely want to do the adria. If he's feeling sick because he's just got something cruddy going on in his digestive tract, we *don't* want to do the adria. And it's hard to determine which it is. Soooo right now we're just waiting to see whether the blood test results tell us anything helpful.

And the news isn't good all around. I know 3 other dogs with cancer at the moment. Tanith--who has hemangiosarcoma like Rem but was on spleen instead of heart--is doing well. But Sparky--with adenocarcinoma of the anal gland--started bleeding last night and the news isn't good. And on Saturday found out that Scud, who's been in remission from lymphoma for at least a couple of years, has it back again. Boo.

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