When my dog Sam underwent his first treatment for cancer at New York City’s prestigious Animal Medical Center, no fewer than five mast cell tumors were removed from his handsome physique. Few would call Sam handsome now, with his Frankenstein-esque, 8-inch-long scars on his neck, back, and hind leg.
And yet, Sam’s tumors were comparable in size to pebbles one might find on the beach. So how come so many pounds of flesh had to come off my poor dog?
When a dog has surgery for cancer, the procedure calls for "wide margins," which means that more than the suspicious growth must be cut away; also marked for removal is a substantial amount of tissue on either side of the growth. Surgery with wide margins is a precautionary measure, just in case the cancer has spread to the tissue surrounding the tumor (the medical term for this spread is metastasis).
When your dog is big, like my 65-pound Sam, so are his surgical wounds. If he has as many as Sam did, compassionate veterinary surgeons have to act fast to minimize the time a canine patient spends under anesthesia. So, in a case like Sam’s, it makes more sense for vets to use metal staples instead of stitches to close up surgical wounds. With five stapled wounds – talk about resembling Frankenstein! – plus a double-wide E-collar to prevent him from bothering those wounds, Sam got his share of sympathetic looks when we went out for walks during his recovery period. Several passersby shook their heads and exclaimed "poor dog!" A few even accused me of animal cruelty (I did my best to explain that those cruel-looking staples were, in fact, helping to save him).
Once the wounds began to heal, Sam’s raven-black coat was slow to grow back in the patches where he was shaved for surgery. That’s because he was prescribed an aggressive course of chemotherapy by the Animal Medical Center’s brilliant oncologist Dr. Nicole Liebman.
Chemotherapy is no easy procedure. Once a month, Sam had to visit the hospital for an injection of the powerful – and powerfully toxic – drug Vinblastin. After his first time, he got sick all over the bathroom floor in the middle of the night (I’m convinced this considerate creature did it in there because he knew it would be easier for me to clean up). After that bout of evening sickness, he tolerated the treatment much better.
Once a month, a week after his Vinblastin shot, Sam took a pill at home for three days straight. It’s a different drug called Cytoxin, and it’s aptly named, because this tablet is a mutagen (meaning less-than-careful contact with it could cause me health problems, including birth defects). So toxic is this drug that Sam’s discharge instructions included a precaution requiring me to wear thick Latex gloves so the pill wouldn’t touch my skin while I administered it to him.
On Cytoxin, Sam would mope around looking generally miserable. And so would I, because I had the choice to stop his pain. Of course, doing so might mean letting cancer get a foothold in his body again. Still, I felt like I was performing horrible chemical experiments on my beloved dog. So I told myself that chemo is a necessary evil: If we could get through the required two months of this routine, my sweetheart had a fine chance of keeping cancer at bay.
For inspiration, I thought of the brave cancer survivors out there, walking on two and four legs, who turn out every year for the Dogs Walk Against Cancer, an annual event each May sponsored by the American Cancer Society. Some survivors walk on three legs, having battled a form of canine cancer that necessitated amputation. For these dogs, the victory walk may be slower, but it’s sweeter too.
