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🇨🇦 What was a highlight of my short 3 day trip to Toronto?
🐕 The Dog Fountain. Clearly the artist loved pugs. Definitely worth IMO seeing if you get to Toronto ♥️🇨🇦Great day 1 at the #hillsglobalsymposium in Toronto
💩 it’s all about the microbiome and prebiotics, probiotics and well, poop.
🤳🏽The afternoon changed gears and covered storytelling and social media, and included a few selfies. I was honored to be asked to join the panel of social media experts
👏 @hillspet is hosting an amazing conference and it’s being live-streamed too. Cannot wait for tomorrow
📲 Check out my stories for more of the fun @ The Carlu🐶 Luke is different than most dogs with lymphoma
🤒 He was sick. Most dogs with lymphoma are actually pretty healthy at the time their cancer is diagnosed. He was so sick his family brought him in on emergency where I work.
👉🏼 Also the location of his lymphoma was also less common. It was involving the lymph nodes inside the chest cavity (called mediastinal) and not the more common peripheral lymph nodes.
⚠️ This causes something called pleural fluid - fluid that accumulates around the lungs making it difficult for the lungs to expand and poor Luke to breathe well. It can lead to a respiratory crisis.
💉 Our criticalist tapped his chest - called a thoracocentesis - removing the fluid to allow him to breathe better and also confirmed the diagnosis
👩🏼⚕️ So that’s where I come in. Chemotherapy time. That’s the treatment of choice for lymphoma. Very high response rates. And very well tolerated in most dogs.
🧬 But before we started chemo and steroids I needed a few more tests. I was so glad no one started Luke on steroids to stop the fluid while he got into see me. I need to run a test called flow cytometry to determine if he has B or T cell lymphoma
📊 Most dogs with lymphoma have B-cell, but dogs with mediastinal lymphoma tend to be T-cell, so this important test let’s us know for sure
🤷♀️ Why do I care? B vs T is the most important prognostic predictor, and I also change his chemo protocol based on this information
✔️And I have had T-cell dogs do better and live longer that B cell dogs. So yes, in my opinion, it is worth treating both
♥️ And I hope Luke will be different that the statistics. And live so much longer. And continue to feel great. Because I love him already
🆕 Looking for more info on steroids and cancer? Check out my newest YouTube video.
youtu.be/JTAfwVaBL5w
🆓 I also have tons of videos on dog lymphoma and chemotherapy. Please check them out, tag someone who might need info, and please do not forget to subscribe