| I went home devastated at the news. When I got home, I had received an e-mail from a rottie friend who's own dog had amputation due to OS. He recommended I e-mail or call a researcher at AMC in Colorado named Dr. Jaime Modiano. He explained Dr. Modiano was doing a study entitled Heritable and Sporadic Genetic Lesions in Canine Lymphoma and Osteosarcoma and that he was seeking rottweilers, among some other purebreeds to be part of his study. I e-mailed Dr. Modiano thinking he would be too busy to respond. I was shocked when a few hours later, Dr. Modiano called me at home and talked to me for over an hour! He explained in detail all the options available (pain management only, palliative radiation, amputation only, amputation with chemo and limb sparing). He went over the normal average stats of survival rates of the various treatment options, explained the various chemo agents (adriamycin, cisplatin, carboplatin), explained some of the pain management meds (feldene, also known as piroxicam, aspirin, etc) and talked about how rottweilers generally handle amp and chemo. In his experiences, he said rottweilers normally do not do well with amputation because they are a front heavy dog. He also said they normally don't tolerate chemo well. However he did say that it was a personal choice, that he just wanted to give me his experience and information. One thing he said really has stuck with me. He explained that if an owner goes through chemo and has been alerted as to what to expect during chemo, if you ask them afterwards how their dog did, they say just fine. It's the people who haven't asked questions or haven't been told about what to expect that say their dogs did horribly on chemo. All of what he told me, I tried to write down and he was very patient with me. I went back recently and read through the notes taken that day and surprisingly, all of it made more sense due to the knowledge I've gained about cancer and treatments over the past few months. So yes, knowledge is power! |
