At Last!!!!!!!

Great news!!!! Sam has finished his chemo treatments!!!!! He has a follow up appointment next month for a blood test, but YAY! NO MORE CHEMO!!!! (Which means G and I might finally start making a dent in those chemo payments!!!!! Another YAY!!!!!)

Sam was so excited that he wanted to bake a cake for Dr. Kelly and her staff. He wanted to make it liver flavored, but I stepped in and baked a lovely yellow cake with buttercream frosting. In the shape of a heart. With mint and dark chocolate chips around it. It was beautiful:

Doesn't that look delicious? G took in it on Monday when Sam had his last treatment and (from what I hear) it was a hit. We are so very grateful to Dr. Kelly and her staff for saving Sam!!! He loves them just as much as we do!!!

Here is Sam with Dr. Kelly. She never fails to get a doggie smile and tail wags. Sometimes he even bays at her! How many vets can say their clients are that happy to see them????

And here are a couple shots of him because I love him so much -- see his yellow bandanna? It says "I took a BITE out of cancer." Yellow is most definitely his color!!!!!

There are a few more, but I am trying REALLY hard not to be a crazy beagle momma. And really? Now that he is done with chemo and has a clean bill of health, this can revert to its original purpose -- a blog about our life together (you know, me, G, Sam, Dixie, Noelle, Patriot, Divot and Diesel).

In that vein, most of you know I have been battling chronic sinus infections for about 2.5 years now. Well, tomorrow that starts to come to an end!!!! I am having a septoplasty and turbinectomy tomorrow and hopefully in a few weeks I will be able to breath out of my nose and the crud that is in my sinuses will drain out taking the chronic infections with it!!!!! FINALLY my life will not be centered around my health! I can concentrate on finishing my pilot license and learning to jump horses!! (Nothing like some high-impact sports right after surgery!) Hopefully I will also be able to start going to the gym again and I can lose some of the flab I am carrying around. Working out seemed to irritate my sinuses so I kept getting sicker and sicker -- haven't been to the gym since AUGUST and I am (strange to say) anxious to get back!!!!!

So that is what is going on this week. As I am off work for the next few weeks I will try to keep this updated. Given the fact I have a brand new bottle of Percocet, the posts might be pretty entertaining!!!!!!

One more pic -- soon I hope to be doing this again!!!!!!! I have not been getting NEAR enough flight or saddle time to make me even close to being easy to live with!!!!!

(Yes that is me and yes, I have 24 million BTUs in my hot little hands!!!! Talk about firepower!)

Photo credit for the balloon photo goes to Alexa Hoffman All the others were taken by G and me.

No News Really IS Good News!

I have been so remiss in updating this blog -- it is disgraceful! However, since I started this blog to help me cope with what I was certain were going to be some very dark days, the lack of updating is actually a good thing!

Sam is doing GREAT. He has finished his every-other-week chemo treatments and has graduated to maintenance treatments once a month. He no longer has to have the dreaded IV chemo that ruins his appetite and makes me sure he is on death's doorstep. Instead he gets the pill form (really, human oncology needs to take lessons here) and just has to have blood work to check on his white blood cell (WBC) count. This is great news!

Dr. Kelly (the oncologist) says he is doing great. At his last appointment she said if she did not know Sam, she would never even know he had cancer. There is no sign of lymphoma ANYWHERE in his physical exam or his blood work.

Sam of course, does not know the difference, but G and I sure do! He is acting younger than he has acted in years and runs around the house like a puppy. He loves to go to Dr. Kelly's office and bays when he sees his favorite nurses (Amy and Garret). The first day I met with the oncologist, Dr. Kelly told me that doggie chemo was nothing like what I was thinking. After having dear friends go through chemo for breast cancer, I thought I was going to have a sick puppy that was going to lose his hair. When she said they jokingly called what they gave "youth serum" I thought they were just trying to make me feel better about what I thought was going to be torturing my dog. They told me eventually Sam would LOVE to come to see them because they made it such a pleasant experience. For obvious reasons, I thought they were lying. Seriously? A dog LIKING to go to the vet? And not only that, a dog LIKING to get poison injected into its veins?

Not so, not so at all. They were so right. Sam loves to go there! He doesn't shake or whine at all!. In fact, he has gotten so he jumps out of the car when we get there and starts baying when he walks in the door. He really gets going when he sees Amy and Garrett (his favorite nurses)! They spoil him rotten -- G says it is like having a rock star for a dog. They actually pre-soak crunchy dog biscuits in water so he can chew them easier! Although I think he always hopes they forget because then he gets canned dog food served to him in a dish by Miss Amy. I think he knows she has a soft spot for hound dogs named Sam -- she lost her basset to cancer and the experience of working through that with Dr. Kelly as her oncologist inspired her to go to vet tech school and now she works for Dr. Kelly! Sam loves her.

This is such a relief for G and I. We were convinced when EVIL DR. PARK AT SUN RANCH VET IN LOS LUNAS misdiagnosed him that we were too late to save him. Now we have a beagle that acts much younger than his 14 years and are looking for another one to add to our family.

I am so grateful that this has all worked out for the best. I was terrified back in August when we finally got a correct diagnosis. I thought he certainly was not going to make it to Halloween, let alone to see his 14th birthday and ring in 2010 with us! We are so blessed and lucky to still have our Sam with us. I think he is going to love having a puppy to train! Maybe soon I will turn this back into a blog about G and I ... but I sure do love talking about Sam. I will have to get him to pose for some pictures soon ...