It's been 9 weeks since Max's CK treatments this week! It's so amazing to see how far he's come! He desperately needs to go for a walk right now but it's still raining and has been all day long.. He has way too much energy and is circling the house like a shark getting into any trouble he can.. stealing the cat's food, breaking into cupboards looking for food, he even grabbed a tennis ball out of the air that I was throwing to Buster #2 our shepherd mix! He hasn't ever done that before! Even before any of this brain tumor business! He chased a couple of balls rolled on the ground for him and then got bored, and chased the laser pointer .. but got bored again. Now he's playing with his cookie board game puzzle where he has to find the cookies under puzzle pieces and move them to get to them.
He has a very slight tremor that has showed up on the right side of his face where his whiskers are. You wouldn't notice unless you were looking very closely, but it's been there for about 4 days now. He also occassionally will get spasms in his arms and legs in just 1 muscle that you can see twitch too. I upped his Keppra to 250mg 2x day and he seems to be doing well with that dose. He's sleeping a little more and is a little more foggy but still himself and active when he's awake. Truth be told, he's more active than the rest of the dogs in the house!
Hi -would you mind telling me how much it cost for the Cyberknife treatment? We've just found out our dog has a brain tumour and this may be one of the options.
ReplyDeleteMaggie
Hi Maggie,
ReplyDeleteIt's not cheap but it was well worth it. We do have pet insurance and they covered 80% of the cost. Max had 2 tumors in 2 different locations. I'm looking at my pet insurance paperwork now and it our total billed was $5439.18 for both tumors. I'm sorry for the delay in responding (we have a couple of others who have decided to get really sick on us..) but this was VERY well worth it for us. Today Max was caught counter surfing and trying to eat a chicken roaster.. and then later today he got into the Christmas presents.. 2 days ago he was running in the woods chasing dogs who were chasing deer, and barking along with them.. It takes about 2 months until they start to get back to normal but even tonight when we were talking, Max was playing with his brain teaser toys trying to figure out where the cookies were hidden and how to get them out.. it's amazing to see how far back he's come.
Hi,
DeleteI know this is old, but I'm hoping you still get notifications on this.
My dog (13 year old Boxer mix) was just diagnosed with a meningioma and in researching options and cost came across your blog. I'm a student, and my mom's recently lost her job, so the 10-12K I've seen mentioned isn't financially possible, but I could probably sell off some of my stuff to come up with 5-6K. Could you tell me where you had the procedure done?
Thanks!
HI There, There are a number of links on the left side of the page to places that offer Cyber knife. Your Veterinary Neurologist will be able to refer you to a facility near you too. There are a number of other facilities that now offer veterinary cyberknife and stereotactic radiation for animals since Max went through it. Where are you located?
ReplyDeleteYes Sravanthi!!!! We actually just used Cyberknife Radiosurgery with another one of our dogs who had a non-cancerous tumor on his pituitary 7 weeks ago and just like with Max, it worked amazingly well! He only needed 2 refractions, rather than the 3 Max had for his 2 meningiomas, and some neurologists / radiology oncologists will actually zap the pituitary masses with just 1 refraction. The Radiology Oncologist we worked with also had found a case study by a group of radiologists in Italy who looked to have had successful results using stereotactic radiosurgery on adrenal tumors and others have had reported success with using it with liver masses. Follow up seems to be key though - some owners/patients don't follow up with their radiologists and some radiologists don't follow up with their patients... it's hard to get accurate statistics when these two things are going on... but there is some great hope and great options that are non-invasive and non-surgical available these days! Buster didn't even need the fiduciaries - they used the bones in his head to triangulate around the tumor. Thank you for sharing your post! I do need to update this blog... There are a lot of new advances including TrueBeam technology as well!
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