July 1, 2024, three days after his 3rd CHOP treatment, he finally started to be in a better mood and act like himself. He still wasn’t eating though so we gave him the nausea/appetite medication that had been sent with us after the first treatment and eventually got some food in him (boiled chicken). We got him up in his quad cart for a short walk, and he no longer had diarrhea. It felt like the first good day in a while and I breathed a sigh of relief.
The next day was pretty much the same. He wouldn’t eat the boiled chicken so I fried it. You do whatever works to get them to eat sometimes. He had his regular physical therapy session and it was uneventful. He was mostly in good spirits.
July 3, 2024 I took him to the vet. For the past couple of weeks we’d noticed him urinating more frequently and thought it was expected with the treatment, but we grew more and more suspicious over time that something else was going on. This morning he was struggling to get anything out. We should trust our guts more and probably should have taken him in sooner because they confirmed he had a UTI and we started antibiotics. They also gave me an appetite stimulant, and boy did that work! He was gobbling down his food a little while later. I was feeling really good by this point. We were coming out of the bad times, he was being more of himself, we found ways to get him to eat, and were getting him treated for the UTI which I’m sure was part of what was making him so uncomfortable recently.
With things going well, Colin and I went out and enjoyed ourselves for the Fourth of July without feeling guilty about leaving him along for a while. When you have bad days, it’s made worse by the guilt of living your own life rather than spending it all cuddling the dog and it’s emotionally draining. We needed a break after the past week and a half. Gizmo isn’t afraid of fireworks, so I never have to worry about that. He slept and listened to some BBC Earth on the TV.
Gizmo had his 4th CHOP treatment on July 5, 2024. I gave him an extra Trazodone to reduce the amount of IV sedation needed, but unfortunately it was wearing off by the time they got to him. Before they started the treatment with the new sedative, he had to be examined by cardiology. He had to wait for the cardiologist to become available, and then wait for both the cardiologist and oncologist to be available at the same time to discuss the results, and then they finally treated him. They saw a small irregularity in his heart on the exam, but it was determined to be stress related to being in the hospital and the EKG he was hooked up to while sedated didn’t show anything further. He was a groggy boy when it was all done, but he wasn’t whining and seeming uncomfortable like last time. It looks like the change in sedative worked out. This is such a relief. If it didn’t, I don’t think we’d have continued the treatment since the other one made him miserable for days. He ate some food before bed without much fuss, too. I’m feeling optimistic that if we can get him back on his feet from the lost muscle mass, we will be in a good place and will have plenty more time with him.