While I was traveling for work a few days, Colin took Gizmo to his 2nd chemo treatment on June 20, 2024. He received cyclophosphamide chemotherapy this time and apparently everything went fine. Like last week, we gave him Trazodone to keep him calm ahead of the session. Colin noted that he was struggling to walk out after the session. It could have been drowsiness from the sedative and/or the expected muscle mass loss that was supposed to come as we started treatments. Or he could’ve tweaked something since the floors at the hospital are slippery. We gave him an extra pain med and let him rest.
The next day, he was still not wanting to put weight on his back right leg (the one he had the femur surgery on) and we ended going into the ER getting it checked out. We had to drop him off and he spent the whole day there waiting to be seen, which I know wasn’t fun for him. They did an exam and took x-rays but couldn’t find a cause, so they sent him home and we put him on codeine and rest for a couple of days. We followed up with the oncologist to see if anything happened while he was there, and they said nothing notable but that he was trying to get up a lot during the treatment so stressing the leg might have ultimately been the root cause. Trazodone alone may not be enough for longer treatment sessions, and we would have to consider IV sedation for his chemo sessions moving forward. After being sedated again at the ER he lost his appetite, and we were back to struggling to get him to eat enough all week. I was dismayed at this since we had just gotten him eating again last week after a long time. Colin had to put him in his quad cart to use the bathroom since he was struggling to walk and stay standing on his own (getting him in the quad cart is usually a two-person job to do, but he somehow managed).
By the third day he was starting to eat a little more, but still didn’t wanting to move and seemed a little depressed. Colin forced him up and into the cart, and then Gizmo decided that he did actually want to take a short walk after all and got into a better mood.
On the 6th day he still didn’t want to move and was resisting our efforts to lift him, but the two of us got him into the car so I could take him to his physical therapy. He had refused us taking him out to poo beforehand and ended up having an accident in the kitchen the moment we got back home, but at least it wasn’t in the water tank at therapy this time.
A whole week later and he still wasn’t getting up on his own and resisted when we were lifting him. He’s learned to just be dead weight and since we can’t hold him up for too long he wins and gets to lay back down again. Gizmo wet himself a little bit before he admitted he really did need to go outside and cooperated. We had to put him in the cart to go out because he’d actually been trying to lay down while peeing the past couple of days. He really hasn’t wanted to be standing on his legs this week. Once he’s in the cart, he perks up a bit and starts walking around. He even hustled a bit to bark at the neighbors walking in the alley.
This week was such a disappointment after how great the previous one was. There were some good moments, but it was hard to see him struggle so much with his orthopedic issues just as the chemo went into remission so early. My hope is that sedating him in the future for chemo sessions will help us avoid another leg issue and we can get back to how things were last week.
