Vodka can haz broccoli

Vodka’s adventures … and misadventures :)

A not-so-great couple of days

It has been a really rough couple of days. The tumor in Vodka’s shoulder has been slowly getting bigger - even with the increased Palladia dose, it seems like we’re just seeing more side effects than effects. He’s been hit with really bad diarrhea, probably the worst so far
Plus, we saw a little [...]

Still fine tuning the dosage

These last few days, Vodka’s been handling the Palladia dose pretty well, but we haven’t been seeing the kind of response we’d like. The tumor seems to shrink the first day or two after the Palladia dose, but seems to get bigger by the third day The net result is that the tumor seems [...]

Working that Palladia

About 8 months ago, Vodka’s pressing needs seemed to be ball-time, walks, hanging out with pals and yummy treats. And some of mine involved making sure he got all that
Things are somewhat different now. Weelllll, his needs are the same … mine, however, are a bit more heavyweight - exploring every option possible [...]

The dosage dance

Vodka had Palladia again today. In the last week without Palladia, the tumor in his shoulder has grown bigger. Really sucks Especially since the unpredictable food response continues:

He’s still picky - what works for one meal does not always work for another
He drank tons of water right after he gobbled up food yesterday AM [...]

This dog eats muffins …

… and eggs!
Yeesh. It has been 4 days since the last Palladia dose. And Vodka’s appetite is nowhere close to normal. As of yesterday, he was still poopy (in terms of quality, not frequency :)) and a bit nauseous. And he seems to have a mental block about eating most meats!!! Not interested in turkey [...]

Food is exciting again!

After a couple of scary days, Vodka’s belly seems to be settling down. About time too. It was pretty unsettling to see him turn his face away from food. This is the same dog that climbs on counters to steal food, gets into a milk box to drink up cartons of milk and buttermilk, even [...]

The side effects start rolling in :(

After 2 weeks of a fabulous response to Palladia, Vodka’s body was finally hit by side effects. Over the last week, he’s been getting increasingly picky about food - he’s been nauseous, gets turned off by various smells, eats a little bit and then walks away All this from the chowhound who has never [...]

It fell off!!!

Remember the cutaneous tumor on Vodka’s back? The first one that came back in late January? The one that slowly grew in size over the last couple of months? The one that we shaved around so we could spray NasalCrom to reduce the histamine release? The one that I hated looking at (I hate all [...]

One tumor becomes 2, and that seems to be a good thing!

So, the hyper-Vodka visited his pals at ACS today. Super-hyper-Vodka. So much so that Dr.Gillings rolled her eyes and asked “Does he *ever* take a break?!” Hmm … yesss, sometimes … like when he sleeps? Or when he’s chased the ball till he truly drops?
Anyway, she was pretty happy with his response to [...]

Day 1 of a clinical trial drug

Today, we started Vodka on a a drug that is in Phase III clinical trial. For those biochem geeks, this is a receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor that is targeted to act on the mutated c-kit of MCTs. Hmm … I hope I got that right. Basically, this class of targeted drugs are expected to inhibit [...]

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