Peggy's Fund

Austin Pets Alive has used money from "Peggy's Fund" to purchase agility equipment and to start a behavioral program. This fund was started by friends.

APA will have a little celebration to dedicate the agility area soon.

Funds donated now will help them start the behavioral program.

There is a website for donations
http://www.razoo.com/story/Peggy-s-Fund

APA will take checks and thank donors. They are a well run non-profit.
Austin Pets Alive
PO BOX 6247 AUSTIN, TX 78762

EIN 742893360

Other Stuff

In the middle of the cancer upheaval little Darwin's home fell apart for him. Fortunately his longtime owner contacted me and and he came back to his puppy home.

With the help of friends and family he rested and regrouped and then found a fantastic home that appreciates his sunny, funny personality and need for order.

He is a happy boy and I am truely blessed, too.

It's April Already

Santa Dash welcomed Christmas for us easing the loss of his storied Momma, DB.

I was recovering nicely from neck surgery and though worries remained, I was looking ahead. Notice the past tense.

January brought the poor news that the sarcoma was sprinkling nodes in my lungs and no one wanted to surgically address that. Chemo was not working. My system was just not bouncing back between doses.

Finally, the sarcoma tumor returned to my neck. I went to the UT Med Branch at Brackenridge knowing I was not alone in my neck. Sure enough it was back. The resident doctor who announced the results to me looked in shock. I clearly instructed her to begin contacting my local oncologist immediately. She did.

Radiation treatments to shrink or slow the tumor progress were set up at Austin Cancer Center. I just finished my last of 25 treatments. I await arrangements for an assessment of progress.

So 2011 did not start as I had hoped.

This weekend I go down to MD Anderson for CT scans, xrays and MRIs to check the healing of my spine surgery and metastatic nodes in my lungs. Hopefully those nodes have been damaged by the chemo therapy I have been through since my last visit.

The chemo has not been fun, but I have had worse. My hair is thinning so I am wearing hats. The worse part is the fatigue and my current low white cell count. I can't go out because I am both tired and subject to catching infections, colds or just not being able to tolerate my own normal bacteria.

I must avoid fresh fruit, vegetables, rare meat, plants, cut flowers and other sources of bacteria. Poor me :(

To top off this holiday isolation, my dearest doggie, DB, had to cross that rainbow bridge. She was a beautiful girl both naughty and queenly. Her breast cancer came back in her lungs after 2.5 yrs of no cancer. There was nothing we could do to make her comfortable. At 14.5 years, we had to say good bye.

I hope to post more cheerful news when I return.

Merry

Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. Love, Peggy

Some Midnight Truths

I need to clarify that this last tumor was identified by the pathologist as metastatic (mets) osteosarcoma. It is a spread of the osteosarcoma. I may have mets in my left lung, too.

That is one reason I am trying to charge toward the next level of treatment should it be chemotherapy or whatever.

I don't know what my sarcoma doctor will recommend. For some reason he wants me to heal and then deal with the next stages.

The tumor and tissue removal was complete and successful, but there is always the microscopic level of the disease.

Sarcomas travel though the blood stream.

Because this is a long battle I sometimes I feel like the "not-dead-yet" man ( from Monty Python and the Holy Grail ). The scene is during the days of the black plague. Someone is calling "throw out your dead" and bodies are coming out of windows onto a wagon. One fellow claims he is not dead, yet.

Fortunately there is much to be done and I came going to do those things as long as it makes sense to me.

Oh and I put on 5 lbs from pre-op to today. Time to walk more.

It's October

About 6:30 this morning my eyes slammed open.

I am still here, pretty calm and comfortable.

The pre-surgery, surgery and in hospital recovery was intense and saved my life.

They did not have to take as much vertebra or muscle as they feared. They did not have to end one of the four arteries to my brain, as we feared. The osteosarcoma was removed in 3 pieces. The pathology report shows clear margins on those last two side pieces. Not sure if I am being clear or now since I am still on muscle relaxers, pain meds and the happy side of major surgery.

I have a Facebook page. It's easy. I posted the status "Home" when I arrived in Austin this past Sat. It is easy and can draw my energy away from the blog. It does not chronicle my experience, share what I can with adults with osteosarcoma like the blog does.

So for today

I am back resting at home (Mom's apartment).I feel as though I look like cartoon character Ziggy ( my hair is short and spiky) and walk like Frankenstein, but I am a little loopy on drugs still.

I can turn my head, walk, smile and healing up. It is hard to not constantly prepare for battle. I found myself impatiently wanting to get the score on chemo and radiation. However, decisions on long term therapies like that will wait for November after I have a few more tests and see my sarcoma doctor.

The doctor prescribed that I wear Charley' Hawaiian shirts. Really!

I am living the best scenario.

September Song

I have a 3 cm lesion on my C2 vertebra that may be a metastasis of my earlier sarcoma. My sarcoma doctor at MD Anderson said it was curable through surgery. The spine/neuro surgeon said it would be a complex surgery. He pretty well scared me. However, I am more afraid of uncontrolled sarcoma. He said he would plan a surgery in September. I could expect a 5-7 day in hospital recovery time.

The surgeon is head of the spine department and performs neurosurgery at MDA. I will be in good hands.

The MRI showed that the small lesion was bigger than first thought. It extends mostly on the left anterior side of the bone and into the soft tissue.
Since sarcoma spreads through the blood stream they want to take it as one piece. They may have to close off one of the arteries to the brain ( there are four). They think they would come in from the right side and cut the bone and tissue as one piece. They don't replace vertebrae. they would use screws and plates to fuse the C1 to the C3 or C4. Since the C2 is like a washer between the C1 and C3 that allows side to side movement, I would have restricted movement.

I commented to them that their description seemed to eliminate day surgery :) They said that for them it would be all day.

I guess I am tough enough to do this, I just am tired of waiting.

Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December....

One hasn't got time for the waiting game