pet connection

I’m in Montreal, attending the annual conference of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. One of the features of this conference is a feel-good media event featuring pets that have survived what are normally devastating or fatal diseases. Appearing this year were Pistache the cat; Nanook, a Samoyed; Sam, a Great Dane; and Dixie, a Rottweiler, along with their owners and veterinarians.

Nanook’s story began with a cough. She had recently been boarded, so kennel cough was the obvious first diagnosis. But medication didn’t help, and the 10-year-old dog was then treated with antibiotics. Those seemed to help, but once the treatment was completed, the cough returned. At this point, Nanook’s people took her to oncologist Louis-Philippe de Lorimier, who diagnosed an intrathoracic histiocytic sarcoma. Nanook’s chest was filled with fluid, which had to be drained several times, and there was a large mass. It’s an aggressive cancer with a typical survival time of only two to three months, even with therapy. “Nanook had brought us so much pleasure that we wanted to give her a chance,” her owners said.

That was last July. After the first treatment, Nanook was looking better, but Dr. de Lorimier was still cautious. “We never know until we treat,” he told the owners, but he was sticking to the short prognosis. By the third treatment, however, Nanook’s improvement had her owners calling her their “miracle dog.” Like most oncologists, Dr. de Lorimier shies away from the words “cure” or “miracle,” but last Christmas he sent a card to the Hamblins and their “miracle dog.”

In all Nanook received four cycles of chemo and is currently on a low-dose oral chemo drug. This “metronomic” treatment, given daily or every other day, is meant to help prevent recurrence of cancer cells. The risk of doing this type of frequent and ongoing treatment is low and the benefit is very high, Dr. de Lorimier says. Nanook is back to doing the dinner dance as her meals are prepared, shown in a film during the presentation. “I have that film in my office, and I watch it when I am sad,” Dr deLorimier says.

Then there’s Pistache. This 18-year-old female spayed domestic shorthair, a very pretty gray tabby, ruled the room, despite being surrounded by four big dogs. She was also a client of Dr. de Lorimier, and he cuddled her as he told her story.

As so often happens when an animal is sick, Pistache had stopped eating. A veterinary exam showed something in her throat, but Pistache’s vet wanted to anesthetize her and take a closer look. She called owner Sylvie Bermingham a few hours later with the bad news, a large mass in the lower jaw, and offered to euthanize the cat while she was still under anesthesia. Luckily for Pistache, her owner wanted time to think about it. She decided to take Pistache to a specialist first.

What Pistache had was inoperable oral squamous cell carcinoma. That’s a bad, aggressive cancer, which typically has a 1 to 3 month prognosis for survival.”It’s a disease we don’t like to see and diagnose, because we don’t have a lot of options for treating it,” Dr. de Lorimier said.

Bermingham was dubious about treatment. She was afraid that chemo would be painful or uncomfortable for Pistache. “I really didn’t think chemo was an animal treatment,” she says, “but I agreed to do one treatment and see how it went. We got immediate, very good results, so we continued.”

That was last May. Pistache is in complete remission. Her typical day? “She goes for a little walk in the forest and brings back a mouse every now and then,” Bermingham says. “She plays despite her age. She’s very lively again.”

I love these stories, having been the owner of a longer-than-expected canine cancer survivor myself. Bermingham gives good advice to owners who are contemplating whether to treat a pet who has cancer: “It requires a fair amount of attention and you have to be dedicated to the treatment because that’s what gives your animal a chance.”

I’m freezing and it’s lunchtime, so I’ll be back later with more stories. Later this week, I hope to be reporting on what’s new in veterinary medicine.

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