Originally Posted by
3ChocMom
Have you seen the pathology report? If not, get yourself a copy and ask your oncologist to go through it with you and explain what everything means. My 13-year-old dog had her left eye removed last year due to a soft tissue sarcoma in the conjunctival tissue. I had a hell of a time with pathologists trying to determine the exact type of cancer, so I am unfortunately now somewhat of an untrained expert. LOL I had 3 different pathologists evaluate her tumor and we still aren't 100% sure. Not only that, but there was some disagreement between her surgeon and the pathologists on the margins. If the margins are "dirty," the report will usually say something like "neoplastic cells extend into the examined margin(s)." In my dog's case, they actually used the word dirty. When the margins are technically clean, but narrowly, that can sometimes be called dirty. This is because there is usually a certain amount of healthy tissue surrounding the diseased tissue that should be excised when possible (sometimes 3mm or more). Depending on the location of the tumor, that isn't always possible. So even though they may not have seen any cancer cells extending into the margins, if the healthy tissue surrounding the excised tumor was less than 3mm (or whatever is the recommended margin for anal gland carcinoma), they may still consider it dirty. I hope that makes sense.
As for chemo or radiation, I opted to do neither. Radiation requires repeated anesthesia for each treatment; my dog would not have done well with that. I was given 2 options for chemo - IV chemo or oral. The IV chemo scared the hell out of me. The dog has to be kept still during the administration because if the drug gets outside the vein, it can be fatal. The oral chemo involves a drug call Peroxicam, which is an NSAID whose number one side effect is gastric ulcers. My dog got a gastric ulcer many years ago from Metacam and since then, I have never given her another NSAID. Since she's prone to them, I knew it was a when, not an if. Her cancer has not spread, it was only in her eye, so like yours, the biggest risk was local recurrence. She wasn't sick and I didn't want to make her sick. I already fed her a home cooked diet, but I started giving her lots of supplements to boost her immune system and some Chinese herbs. It has been 11 months and she is cancer free. I still worry every day that tumor will come back, but so far, so good. Good thoughts for you and Yogi.