It was what we expected, lymphoma, with a significant tumor in the chest and a few weeks of life expectancy.
There were 2 options of treatment.
Do the tumor biopsy while it was still there since under prednisone it might dissappear, at least for a while. The biopsy would confirm if we were dealing indeed with lymphoma or not and determine the type of cancer. Depending of the type of cancer, we could opt for a chemotherapy or another, if this was what we wanted to do.
Or continue with a high dosage of prednisone which might improve the situation a little bit but, since prednisone is not a cure, the cancer would come back sooner or later, stronger than before.
Because the life expectancy was just a few weeks, we did not see any reason to cause Sparky more suffering by doing the biopsy. Less suffering was desirable and also to make him to have the best possible life for his last few weeks.
The vet agreed with our option.
Considering the size of the tumor, chemotherapy was probably not a good idea because no one knew how the dog would react to it. It was also expensive and very difficult to do. The dog would need to go to a special clinic twice per week, sedated and given the chemotherapy intravenously, then brought home and constantly monitored. For any negative change in his situation, we would have to go back to the clinic. Often hospitalization was also not excluded in case of complications from the "treatment".
The best case scenario for the chemotherapy would be, if the dog responded well to it, about 1 year of life.
So knowing that he had at best 3 weeks of life, we chose not to do the chemotherapy. The vet explained that, if not done right away, chemotherapy was not effective after prednisone was taken for a longer time. So it was now or never.
Prednisone was the "medicine", together with furosemide (to drain the water from his body) and metronidazole, an antibiotic for stomach bacteria that may cause diarrhea or loose stool. We started seeing looser stool recently so this was one of the things discussed.
Prednisone was considered the "miracle drug which saves lives". Many dogs lived for a while after getting it but just for a while. On average, a few weeks, in rare occasions maybe a few months. Initially, it has a strong effect on reducing any internal inflammation (which may make the cancer go away) but over time it has less and less efficiency. Also, it impacts the internal organs over time (liver, kidney).
Without a biopsy, how would the doctor know that we dealt with lymphona and not something else? Good question. She did not know for sure but chances were very, very high.
How would the dog die in these conditions? Why did my wife have to ask this? He would either die suffocated when he could not breath any longer or one of his internal organs would give up and cause a massive internal hemorrhage.
Ignorance is bliss for exactly this reason.
You need more information hoping that you can do something good with it and have a chance to help. But the opposite may happen as well. You may just understand that the situation is hopeless, that there is not much to do and all that is left is hope. Hope that Sparky would be given more time to be with his family until he joins his larger family for ever.
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