Introduction

I decided to write this blog for me, for all of those who are rooting for Jenna, and, hopefully, to help other people and their dogs who are faced with the same questions, worries, and decisions that we find ourselves facing.

In September, we found out that our 8-year-old Humane Society mutt, Jenna, had lymphoma. We had been noticing for several days that she seemed a little lethargic and strangely "off" to us. Then one evening, our dog, who is normally an eater of all things, edible or non, turned her nose up at her dinner. We went straight to the vet, where an enlarged lymph node was discovered in her chest. They took a needle aspirate of the node, and the results from the lab came back with the diagnosis: lymphoma.

The good news, we were told, is that lymphoma tends to be one of the more treatable cancers, and survival times with chemotherapy can extend to over a year. (Survival time for untreated lymphoma patients, by the way, is about 1 month.) We had lost our other dog from a rare, terribly aggressive type of cancer just 7 months before Jenna's diagnosis, and we were not prepared to go through that again so soon. We decided to try the chemo.

There was a catch, though. About a year ago, Jenna had a near-death experience with a condition called Evans Syndrome. It's basically an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks red blood cells and platelets. It makes the animal life-threateningly anemic and prone to unstoppable bleeding. Jenna lived through this ordeal and made a full recovery, but she is always considered to have the condition, and it is always possible that it could return at any time. The oncologist that advised our veterinarian about chemotherapy said that Jenna was not likely to have the same survival time as a non-Evans dog, but that there was no way to be certain of what kind of timeframe we might expect. She also stated that Jenna may have complications from the chemo because of her previous blood disorder.

However, the thing about Jenna is, she's a tank. We know from the Evans episode that she can tolerate massive doses of some pretty unpleasant drugs without even slowing down. She has a cast-iron gut, which we know from her years of habitual garbage looting, random sidewalk litter swallowing, kitchen pillaging, and shoe/belt/coat eating. So despite the uncertainties,we decided to try the chemo anyway.

After the first treatment, her lymph nodes, which by then ranged from golf-ball-sized to billiard-ball-sized, decreased by about half. As of today, we're 8 weeks into the chemo, and she's plowing through it. Her appetite is as excessive as usual, and she's happier and more energetic than she was before we even started the chemo. The vet has been crowing for weeks that she can no longer even detect the lymph nodes. We don't want to jinx ourselves by saying the "R" word yet, but after 2 more weeks, if she continues to do this well, we can openly declare that she is reaching that ultimate goal: Remission.

This has been a long post. I promise, the rest won't be! Future posts will cover things like drugs, costs, and, of course, regular updates on Jenna's condition, because I know those were things that I was looking for when I found out Jenna had lymphoma. I hope this blog will help other dog owners to feel more hopeful about treating lymphoma, and I hope it will dispel some common fears about chemo. Most of all, I hope that I will continue to be able to blog about Jenna, because it means that she will still be here.