After being diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma last April, Bryce is still with us and still looking/acting very much like himself.

The disease was fairly stable through the summer, so I didn’t start him on treatment. Then his protein/glubulins started climbing and I made plans to finally start treatment. As luck would have it, the bloodwork before he was initially to start showed his white cells lower than normal, so his oncologist recommended starting him on Prednisone (half of the protocol) for a couple of weeks to see if they came back up before adding in the Melphalan (which can itself drop white cell counts). After a couple weeks on the Pred his globulins were stable, his albumin was the best it’s been since before we discovered this, and his white cells were well within normal range.

Side note: If you ever want to make yourself really crazy, check your dog’s bloodwork every month.

With the go-ahead to start on the chemo, next thing was trying to find a pharmacy that could make it up in that small a dose! Finally found one and picked it up yesterday – I haven’t given it to him yet, fingers crossed it will go well when I do. It would be tempting to just leave him on the Pred (which is in itself a treatment protocol for myeloma) but the average remission/life expectancy times are dramatically different – 560 days with the Melphalan/Prednisone vs 270 with Prednisone alone.

Bryce has been participating in all his normal activity all this time. He hasn’t been completely on top of his game in agility, but he had a few good trials, some really amazing runs and collected quite a few Q’s. I notice he’s REALLY tired at the end of a day/weekend – most pronounced at indoor trials because he doesn’t SLEEP! When he’s outside in the car, he’ll nap between runs and was ending the days with a fair amount of energy.

At home he’s been going for walks, playing with his sisters, making “amorous gestures” at Jayda and generally being his bouncy happy self. I’m hoping the chemo doesn’t change that, but he’s in no hurry to leave us and if I want him to stay around for a while yet I think that’s the road I need to take. Although he’s acting fine now, it’s almost certain this disease will eventually do bad things to him – the longer I can put that off the better.