Hey everyone.

Some of you may recall my Loki was diagnosed in August with
immunoblastic polymorphous lymphoma and died last month, only two weeks
before his 4th birthday. We started with surgery to remove his spleen
and some masses in his abdomen. It took a while after that to figure
out what treatment to go with. We finally decided on Cytoxan every
three weeks. It *really* shrank the tumors in his throat, although they
started to grow again before his second treatment. He was also on high
doses of prednisolone during this. He only had two shots of Cytoxan and
died 5 days after his second treatment, possibly of severe anemia.

I picked up Loki's final lab results today. Took a while I guess to
process the bone marrow sample for testing. Unfortunately it didn't
really give us any answers. No sign of cancer in any of the tissue
samples, but that just means the cancer was *probably* not widespread
yet, although not for sure. All it really says is the cancer wasn't
visible in the samples we took. We know he still had it because he
still had at least one palpable tumour. All they got from the bone
marrow was: good white cells and platelets but low red blood cells.
But we already knew he was anemic. They said autolysis prevented more
detailed results, though I brought him for autopsy the morning he died.
So no answers, just Loki's case wasn't typical, either in how fast the
cancer advanced or how he responded to treatment. We don't even know
for sure if he died of anemia, or if that was caused by the cancer or
the treatments (though he was weak for several days after both
treatments, showed possible symptoms of anemia after both, and bounced
back about a week after the first one). Maybe he'd have pulled through
if we'd done something to treat the anemia. Maybe he'd have responded
better to a different drug (we were originally going to try Lomustine).
No answers, just lingering questions.

Sigh.

--
John, Caregiver to Kody and Abby
With loving memories of Buddy, Cassie, Sammy,
Buster, Pandora, Tommy, Jasper and Loki

[Posted in FML 7610]