By the time we got to her office, I'd done several hours research. And while I couldn't necessarily pronounce the medical terms, I knew the range of treatments and, worse, I knew the likely lifespan we were looking at.
Palliative care (just make her feel better) = phenobarbital and prednisone. Median lifespan (half live longer, have shorter) 3 months.
Surgery. Maybe 7 months.
Surgery plus radiation. Maybe a year.
Chemo. Maybe helpful, and maybe not. There's something called the blood brain barrier that prevents most drugs from getting to the brain.
And the data was across the board, meaning some lived longer and some died in a day. Plus, there just wasn't that much data. Scientific studies with only 20 or 30 dogs in the study didn't inspire a lot of confidence in predictability. Could be better, could be worse. Just not clear.
It struck me that a dog's typically much shorter than human lifespan was going to work against us here. Surgery would, statistically anyway, increase her lifespan by 2.7%. On a dog, that's 4 months. On a human, that was nearly 2 years.
But as we talked about it, the very concept made us cringe. You're going to open up her skull and scoop out the tumor, and not put the bone back on. What about brain swelling (a not-uncommon post brain surgery effect). What about...what about the million other things I can think of that make brain surgery sound like something scary, rather than something I'd be doing to help my dog!
We left with the palliative meds and told her we would think about our options.
That night I had a delayed birthday dinner with 2 friends. I drank a bit too much bourbon when I got there. And, I cried in front of both of them. Didn't sleep much that night either. Kept thinking to myself, "Our little girl has a brain tumor..."
No comments:
Post a Comment