Still Here

March 1^st. I take another deep breath; knock on wood, pinch myself. He's still here. Daily, I watch for signs of deterioration, but other than a constant waxing and waning of lymph node size my pack-brother is enthusiastic to a fault about our walks, about his meals (and of course, bites of our meals), and about momentary snuggles.

Occasionally, I find myself second guessing the choices I've made about Nicholai's care. He's so strong entering his fourteenth month since diagnosis, I wonder if he could have weathered chemotherapy and if it might have bought him additional time. Then I think, wait a minute, I'm debating if he might have weathered the treatment, and I know it's possible he might not even have survived it. But, still … what if haunts me.

I've received emails from people wishing they hadn't elected to pursue courses of chemotherapy; in hindsight seeing that their canine companion didn't gain quality time. I've also heard from people heartbroken because they couldn't afford the treatment regimen and feel they let their beloved dog down. I remind myself that hindsight is always 20/20, it's making the best choice we can today, with the information and resources we have that's important.

No one should feel guilty about thoughtful choices they make to care for a cancer diagnosis in their canine companions. Treatment consisting of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery is cost prohibitive for some families, and though sometimes it does, it's far from certain to succeed. In a situation where every choice has very real costs associated with it, no choice can be deemed better than another. Each conscientious owner is doing the best he or she can with the information and resources available at the time.

What concerns me is there seems a dearth of exploration of the road between "doing nothing," which many people feel is their only choice, or pursuing aggressive, potentially harmful, always expensive, frequently unsuccessful pharmaceutical approaches. I wish that alternative methods of treatment could get more serious scientific review. I wish that inexpensive, non-toxic approaches like vitamins and herbs could get their day of honest, detailed scrutiny.

When I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, the doctors told me that I would need chemotherapy to survive, but the research showed me that the main drug they proposed to use – fluorouracil – had been proven to be ineffective two decades earlier; that was the reason the Mayo clinic doctors felt they could ethically experiment on colorectal cancer patients with vitamin C – their treatment was doomed to fail. The profound disconnect between the standard of care recommended, even pushed, at me and the scientific knowledge base shook me to the core. The experience was pivotal for me, and I can no longer take a prognosis from a medical authority on its face.

Nicholai's success so far points me to the fact that there are more options out there than we know. Too few of us – human or animal – feel that we can opt out of the standard of care, lest we lose the "battle" with cancer, but so often we lose anyway. For all our sakes, we must explore other paths and see where they will lead us.