Very Sick Boy

Leo is very, very ill. The latest round of chemo, the doxyrubicin, is really taking its toll on him.  Last night, we were at the vet getting fluids and some meds.  Tonight, Leo is in the hospital, getting IV fluids and anti-nausea meds.

He has not eaten since Thursday, and was vomiting everything on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  This morning, he threw up water.  He's too nauseated to do anything, and it sucks.
I'll be honest - I don't think we should do the doxyrubicin again, even if it's something that reduces survival. Because this, what he's been through for the last 4 days, is not survival.  Rather, it's just survival. He can't eat, can barely stand, can't walk, can't even control his bowels, and this is supposed to be "surviving".  This is crap (no pun intended).  This is why I put Bit down - to avoid this sort of thing.  This is not a quality of life.

It's time to have a chat with the doctors to figure out what we can do about this.  Do we take a break? Do we let his body heal? What are the risks?

But I can't do this to him.  I can't have him walk in to the vet on a Thursday, and walk out a sick dog who's hospitalized 3 days later.  This is a bunch of crap.  This is not how he should be living, not how he should be spending the little bit of time that he has left.  He has a handful of weekends left in his life.  I'd like to be spending those weekends hiking, doing Leo things, out and about.  Spending them going back and forth to the vet, and then spending the rest of the time cleaning up vomit and poop is just not how any of us want to be spending our time -including Leo.  He's not a lay around the house dog.  He's a get out and do things dog. And if he can't, if that's not part of him, is he still Leo?

What scares me is he looks tired.  He's aged 2 or 3 years in the past 4 months.  And today, today I saw what I don't want him to become. He was as sick, or sicker, than Bit was when I put him down - and it was because Bit wasn't going to get better, or if he did, it wasn't going to be better, for longer. I owe Leo the same courtesy, as hard as that is.  The good news is that he should be getting better.  This is just side-effects of chemo, not the end-effects of cancer.  But they look the same, make them feel the same, and it is awful, just the same.