Category: Rambo

Folks, I could not post this until I talked to a few people from his life, as well being a little bit more sure in the diagnosis.

Please keep Rambo (RCK Rambo) in your thoughts over the next few months. Rambo has been diagnosed with Lymphoma and we are not sure how aggressive it is going to be. About 6 weeks ago he started having stomach issues, the runs, etc. At the same time he started heavy panting. We took to vet and they gave us some antibiotics, probiotics, etc. About 3 weeks ago he started throwing up (not blood) and panting really really bad. Then he started walking way from food, and that never happens. Even treats were not interesting to him at all. He started taking Rangers approach that if it made him sick he was not going to touch it again. I took him to the ER vet and they did a number of tests, images, and sent the results out for consultation. They found a swollen lymph node on the spleen. There was still a bit of a toss-up between lymphoma and IBD (irritable bowel disease). The treatment for an 11 year old dog is pretty similar, steroids. So, onto steroids he went. Starting with 30mg of Predisone twice a day for 7 days and then down to 30mg once a day. He also got some other antibiotic and stomach pills to help alleviate the throwing up. In the process of this Rambo lost a little over 10 pounds.

The good news is that the eating issues have stopped. He is eating properly (wants to eat everything in sight). The panting continues on and off and rare, but is sort of under control now. we also have runny poop, like watery runny, on and off during the day. We can most likely say that he is not in pain right now.

The bad news is that last night I felt hard lumps of lymph nodes in his neck. That was the first time I had felt them that hard and it is not a good sign of things to come, it sort of confirms the diagnosis.

Our next vet appointment is on Thursday at 11:45am so we will see how things are progressing at that time. We are also getting a second opinion on the Dx. He is comfortable now, he is eating, he is going outside. He knows something is wrong, and as all dogs do, they live in the minute. He is not ready to leave us at this time, and home for him is where the pack is.

Please do not suggest things like chemo, etc. He is 11 years old and doing anything other than supporting care / steroids at this time would be doing it more for us than him.

Edited to add: We know what the outcome of this is going to be and we are not imagining that a sudden cure will come along. We do not know if it is going to be weeks or months. There is just too much variation on how this disease progresses. There is no cure for this, there is only time.

He finished his antibiotics this morning. He’s been hungry for the last day and a half…. we can’t seem to be giving him enough food. Crossing my fingers that he gains a little bit of his weight back. Not all of it, but about 5 pounds would be nice. Tonights dinner was chicken, some veggies, rice, and pasta. Tomorrow I am going to try and put some beef into his food for him.

5:15am has not been good to me this week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday Rambo has needed to go out for an emergency pee. Then, this morning I guess Jesse took care of Rambo’s emergency out at 4:30am and I slept through it. But at 5:15am my Apple Watch decided it would be a lot of fun to dial 911 for me. I guess I must have been sleeping on my arm and somehow put enough pressure of the watch face to put it into emergency mode. Awesome. Since I did not have my glasses on I could not see how to make it stop, so I had to get up and talk to the dispatcher and convince her that it was not an emergency. Guess I won’t be sleeping with the Apple Watch on anymore.

How did he know I hid those pills in that???? The boy is good, that’s all I can say.