Past #6 6/6/2019

It has been a week now since Spirit completed the radiation treatments, 18 in all, taking up most of the month of May. He is feeling lousy, the worst since this all began.

I administer anti –inflammatory medicine once per day (in his afternoon meal) along with pain medication three times a day, once with a small morning meal, again with his evening meal and again at bedtime so he can sleep peacefully through the night. Each one pretty much knocks him out, causing him to sleep/doze/in a stupor for hours.

I can see the pain killer does two good things – helps alleviate the pain but also gives him the healing gift of rest, allowing him to sleep more peacefully, day and night.

These are hours he has little interest in aggravating his leg or jaw wounds, locations where the radiation killed not only cancer cells but did significant healthy tissue damage that now has to heal.

Any regrets?

I look at him as I pet him, his eyes closed, and it breaks my heart to see him like this. His normal self is unbounded energy and enthusiasm.

But, no, no regrets.

The radiation did its job of killing off localized cancer tumors that were going to metastasize if left untreated.

So, this will be his pathway to complete healing, to the possibility of having a normal, healthy life.

Radiation treatment is very expensive ($9000 for treating both sites with each treatment), and very time consuming. But what is money and time (if we are lucky enough to have it) for if not to help those we love?

I have started giving him CBD oil twice a day; the wild west here, but the natural chemotherapy treatment I have opted for, hopefully helping his own immune system kill off whatever cancer cells still exist in his body.

Does it have any efficacy for this purpose? There is a very thin amount of science out there that suggests CBD oil kills cancer cells. Dosing is still a mystery.

Still, I decided I would not put Spirit through conventional chemotherapy.

I watched my wife deal with it, and she could tell the doctor when and how it hurt, about the multiple and sometimes horrendous side effects. But, dogs can’t talk. And, like any animal, they instinctively hide pain as a defense mechanism, a survival tool. Spirit is, therefore, incredibly stoic.

So, my gut feeling is not to put him through it.

So, I will take the more benign, totally painless, and possibly effective approach of CBD instead. Another benefit that is better known is it tends to reduce anxiety, so a good thing, whatever other benefits it may offer.

If I can spend thousands of dollars on radiation, what is a few hundred more to possibly help with a cure. Only up side, no down side I can see at all.

I will never know of course, no matter how things turn out. Not running a double blind study here with a statistically significant number of patients.

I also give him 300 mg of milk thistle with his meals to help his liver get rid of the chemicals I am putting into his body. Does this help? Again, cannot hurt, will never know. I would do it for me is all I know for sure. So I will do it for him.

I apply pure aloe vera to his leg wound four times/day (happen to have a plant and learned how to extract the aloe from the leaves). He seems to appreciate how it feels as I dab it on with a bit of cotton ball. He won’t let me touch his jaw, where most of the pain he is feeling exists.

The tech’s at the radiation center suggested using Aquaphor for this but also liked the idea of aloe. But will have to stop cutting leaves if I am not to kill the plant, so ordered pure aloe vera but may have to use Aquafor while waiting for it to arrive.

I can apply this right now to his leg but he won’t let me touch his jaw. Obviously he is in a lot of pain there. When the pure, organic aloe vera I ordered shows up, am going to whip it up with an immersion mixer, then see if I can put it in a spray bottle so I can spray his mutilated jaw area without having to touch him. Not sure how this is going to work

Spirit, even when he is totally well, is almost miraculously calmed by soothing music, played at a very low volume. I do this as much as I can, filling the house with barely audible (to me) Enya, the more delicate pieces of classical or new age music, almost meditation music. (He gets as far away as he can from loud sounds, TV or radio, as he can – really bothers him.

So, these days we are using the healing power of music as well.

Here is my boy: