Ups and Downs

I honestly meant to provide an update on Hope a lot sooner, but the last couple of weeks have been so full of ups and downs I didn't know where to start. Just when I thought I had something of interest to report, the next day would be the complete opposite. Hope's symptoms have just been ebbing and flowing like nobody's business.

Let me first just say that I am SO thankful that she's still with us. Three weeks ago today when she got her chemo treatment, I really didn't think there was any way she'd last this long. I don't know why I'm ever surprised by her though--it's like she gets tougher with age and adversity. With that said, this last chemo we tried really took a toll on her. She's dropped tons of weight despite her ridiculously good appetite, and the first week after her treatment her red and white blood counts dropped significantly. She was lethargic and clearly didn't feel well, and her mucus-y nose only mildly improved. Even worse, her cancerous lymph node didn't respond positively at all. Unfortunately it continues to grow, which is why we decided to forgo another chemo treatment today.

Stopping the current regimen wasn't a difficult decision since it doesn't seem to be working and was clearly making Hope less comfortable. However, since there's a third chemo that the oncologists at K-State want to try that they think has some significant potential, the decision to quit treatment is a little more difficult. In fact, I'm still not 100% sure that stopping treatment altogether is the right thing. On days like today, when Hope only wanted to walk about half a block and slept most of the morning, continuing chemo seems like a cruel thing to do to her. However, on days when she has more energy and spends the whole day scouring the kitchen floor for crumbs, it seems like she would do just fine trying another chemo drug that might alleviate her symptoms. It's just so hard to read a dog who eats like there's no tomorrow, even when she's dying of cancer. This video was actually taken on July 17--exactly one week after her last chemo treatment when she was still feeling kind of crappy.



Not only do I think her problem solving skills are quite impressive, I'm also super impressed that she still has the ability to sniff out bits of food while dealing with tumors up her nose! Hope is nothing if not determined! :)  

Hanging In There

A couple of days ago, we made our fourth trip to K-State with our sweet Hope. She's had lots of ups and downs in the last few weeks, but today's been a pretty good day and she's definitely hanging in there. When she was first diagnosed just over three weeks ago, we really weren't sure that she'd make it this far, so we are incredibly thankful.

Three weeks ago Hope started the normal chemo/steroid combination for mast cell tumors, and just like with her first cancer in 2007, her cancer seemed to respond initially. Although we can't see her tumor(s), her snottiness and sneeziness definitely subsided a little, and her lymph node seemed to shrink slightly as well. Unfortunately, as soon as we started weaning her off of the steroid (which the doctors do because of the side effects), Hope's symptoms returned--just like they did in 2007. While I was in California last week visiting my brother with my mom, Hope's nose started bleeding again off and on. By Wednesday, her bloody, mucousy nose had gotten so bad that Chad and I had a serious conversation about having her put down that afternoon. However, when we got to K-State, Dr. Burr was confident that Hope still had some fight left, just based on her appetite, activity level and general attitude. She suggested we start a new chemo drug, and thankfully this one only has to be given once every three weeks instead of every week. It will be such a relief not to have to drive to Manhattan next Wednesday!

The good news is that Hope's icky nose secretions have subsided a little once again, so we are hopeful that this chemo will keep her discomfort at bay a little while longer. It's just so hard to know if we're doing the right thing for our little girl. People keep telling us that we'll know when it's the right time to let her go, but when you own the toughest dog in the world, it's nearly impossible for us to know if she's really in pain! We just keep praying that she will clearly display some signs that she is done fighting when that time comes. Until then, we'll continue with weekly bloodwork, lots of drugs, and potty breaks every couple of hours! Our little Hope is worth it. :)

Losing Hope

Chad and I are so sad that the time has come to write this blog post, but we knew these events would be upon us sooner or later and we've been trying to prepare ourselves for many months. It's heartbreaking to think about, but the reality is that we are losing our tough, weird and absolutely precious girl Hope.

The crazy thing is, despite the fact that Hope has surpassed the average age of a Coonhound and  is also deaf and arthritic, she's still usually very happy and active. Her appetite is incredibly good--she's obsessed with food every waking moment of the day. Her favorite pastimes are searching the yard for mushrooms and perusing the floor for spills. This adorably sweet face stares up at me hoping for treats anytime I'm sitting in the kitchen--even when I'm not eating. She loves to go for walks, loves to meet new people and generally seems to love life. That's why it's so difficult to accept that she's once again battling cancer.

Hope's symptoms started just over a month ago, when we started noticing she was abnormally sneezy and snotty. She would occasionally wake us up in the middle of the night with some massive snoring, so we asked our vet about it at her annual checkup a few weeks later. He suggested that it might be allergies and prescribed more Benedryl, but he also tried to prepare us for the possibility that Hope might have a nasal tumor. Just a couple of weeks later, Hope starting having a massive amount of mucus come out of one nostril. I called the vet, who prescribed an antibiotic without even seeing her, but within a few days the mucus had become increasingly bloody. This was obviously quite messy and quite alarming, so last Monday we took her in for an x-ray and culture. When our vet saw Hope's sinus cavity on the x-ray, he was shocked at the amount of destruction of the soft tissue and cartilage on her leaky side. He thought the only options were a massive infection or cancer, and when the cytology came back with no bacterial or fungal infection, we knew cancer was the only option left.

Although we'd obviously had a great experience with Hope's surgeon in Overland Park, we weren't huge fans of the oncologist there, so today we took Hope to the College of Veterinary Medicine at K-State. We saw one of the oncology residents, Dr. Burr, who was absolutely wonderful. She was so amazingly patient with our plethora of questions and was so thorough in explaining everything. After leaving Hope there for a couple of hours for bloodwork and a biopsy of her lymph node, we found out from Dr. Burr that her tumor was not as expected. Instead of finding cells that confirmed a carcinoma in her sinuses, she actually found mast cells in the lymph node--meaning that she has a mast cell tumor (the same kind of tumors she's had in the past) somewhere that has metastasized.

I say a tumor "somewhere" and not in her sinuses because Dr. Burr indicated that a mast cell tumor in the nose is extremely rare--she's only seen one once in the 5 years she's been in oncology. So either Hope has a very rare sinonasal mast cell tumor, or she has a mast cell tumor somewhere else in her head and another cancerous tumor in her nose, which seems even more unlikely--at least to us. Dr. Burr wanted to do a CT scan and then biopsy the tumor(s) once they figured out exactly where they are, but we think it was more out of curiosity from a clinical standpoint, since Hope is such an unusual case. We declined that option--to us it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Ultimately, Hope has an inoperable tumor up her nose, and even though different drugs might work better on carcinoma, we know there's a mast cell tumor somewhere--and that should respond to a chemo/steroid combo.

So today our sweet little girl started chemo. We'll take her to Manhattan for chemo once a week for the next three weeks, and then every other week for four treatments after that. Thankfully, dogs don't have a lot of side effects from this chemo, and hopefully it will improve her quality of life as well as extend it. We just want our little weirdo to feel good as long as possible!

As I was looking back at some of the posts from 2007 when Hope had her first mast cell tumor, I realize even more how incredibly blessed we've been that this sweet and miraculous girl has been a part of our family. She's been enjoying life for six years since that first diagnosis--which seemed liked a death sentence at the time. She has provided us with thousands of hours of love and laughter, and we couldn't be more thankful for the time we've had with her and any additional time the chemo can provide.

The Year in Pictures 2012

So clearly my plan to start blogging semi-regularly again didn't really pan out. Oops. The intentions were there--I promise! In fact, I actually started working on our fourth annual year in pictures slide show immediately after writing my last post--I just kind of forgot about finishing it! It finally hit me a couple of weeks ago that I'd never gotten it posted, and then it took me at least another week to figure out how to embed it into my post--both Blogger and YouTube have changed so much in the year I haven't been using them! So anyway, this post is sort of untimely now, but I'm going to share regardless.

Just like the last few years, my rule was that any time I picked up either my point and shoot or DSLR camera, I had to choose ONE picture from that set to include in the slideshow. This means that you'll see random pictures here and there that are completely uninteresting and make no sense, so I tried to briefly explain in captions. I didn't include a pic from each day I took one with my phone, which would have made this slideshow about 20 minutes long. There were a couple of events for which I chose a picture from my phone instead of a picture from my camera, just because I thought it was a better representation of the moment, but I only allowed myself to "cheat" with the phone if my camera was also present. :) So there's my explanation, and here's my video! Enjoy!!

Christmas 2012

Greetings, people of the Interwebs! It's been so long since I've blogged I'm actually having to relearn how to use Blogger--it's changed so much in the past year. Hopefully I can figure this thing out enough to create my sixth blog post of the last 365 days!

Although I obviously completely failed to chronicle the adventures our life in 2012, I did want to share our annual Christmas letter, which will at least give everyone a tiny snapshot of what has filled up our year. I've missed keeping a blog--not so much the writing itself, but having a journal of our life to look back on. I'd really love to restart the habit in 2013, but I'm not going to set any lofty goals. These days my brain is so scattered from wearing so many different hats--I can't focus from one minute to the next. Sitting down to put ideas on digital paper seems overwhelming to the point of impossible. But who knows what the year will bring? Maybe I'll be able to simplify a bit and focus enough to write from time to time. Either way, please enjoy our Christmas letter from 2012! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

December 16, 2012

Dearest family and friends,                                                                             

I hope this letter finds you all healthy, happy and more prepared for the holiday than I am! As usual, I'm starting our Christmas letter weeks after receiving our first holiday greeting in the mail. I can only hope that this is at least reaching you by the 24^th! 
 

We've had a good 2012 and managed to survive both of our 40^th birthdays, which turned out to be lots of fun and relatively painless. We took a lovely vacation to Florida to celebrate our friends Mike and Tiffany's wedding in April, went to Tulsa in June for another wedding reception, and made a very quick trip to Nashville in early November to see a special Old 97's show. We enjoyed visits from my brother, my dad and his wife, and other out of town guests. We loved seeing our Jayhawk basketball team make it to the national title game and spent Saturdays this fall cheering on a losing KU football team that was on the cusp of decency. 
 

Our pups are both doing well—we celebrated Hope's 12^th b-day in August, even though we've come to realize she's probably closer to 13 or 14. Since a Coonhound's life expectancy is only 12-13 years, we are super thankful that she's still with us. She's a little arthritic and has a bum shoulder that she limps on occasionally, but most of the time she is FULL of goofiness and jumps around with far more exuberance than her little brother. Fresco turned 6 in September and is still the most loving and cuddly boy you'll ever meet! 
 

Chad's year has been relatively devoid of major change—he continues to enjoy his job at Westar and continues to play lots of golf! He just returned from his annual golf trip to Florida with his friend Dante, where he played 36-46 holes of golf every day. A minor knee surgery this summer didn't even slow down his obsession! He also continues to serve on the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce board, and just last week he finished up his term on the Lawrence Sustainability Advisory Board. While he's thankful to be done with that commitment, he's exchanging that “extra-curricular” leadership role with a much bigger one at church starting in January. He'll be leading our set-up and tear-down teams at EastLake—handling all the scheduling and being at church from 6:30 until almost 1 each Sunday. Although I know he'll want me to take this part out of the letter, I'm super proud of him and amazed by his willingness to work 6 days a week!
 

Things at our church are obviously good, and we're very thankful to be part of a church where growth and life change continue to happen. Although I've stepped down from volunteering on our kids team regularly, I took over leading our prayer team in March and have been so blessed to serve our church family in this way. My other volunteer passion, the food pantry at Heartland Community Health Center, also expanded significantly in January of this year when I became the volunteer coordinator there. I now spend 15-20 hours a week shopping, stocking, sorting, scheduling and serving the people who come in for assistance. I also try to be in Topeka one day a week to hang out with my mom (she moved back there this summer), and I continue to do lots of portrait sessions for friends just as a hobby. I would love to someday start a photography business, but that will have to happen later since right now I just don't have the time! 
 

We hope that your 2012 has been filled with an abundance of blessings and happiness. May you enjoy peace, joy, the company of loved ones and lots of relaxation this holiday season!

With love,

Kim (and Chad)

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. --Isaiah 9:6