The Diagnosis

For about a year now, my 10 year old Staffordshire Bull Terrier has been suffering from Rhinitis, or that was what we were told at the time.

It started out as just sneezing, minor discharge and what seemed to be a big annoyance to Lexy.  In the beginning we just went to our regular vet and tried out different types of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and antihistamines.  When none of this worked over 3 months, and not one but two vets in that office shrugged their shoulders and said Rhinitis, we decided to try a different vet.

The next vet understood our frustration and offered a way to get down to the problem.  A CT\Rhinoscopy\Biopsy ($$$$) would tell us what we need to know.  At this point the discharge had become bloody, the sneezing more often, and we didn't care how much it costs as long as she could stop suffering.  Imagine having SEVERE allergies, but every time you sneezed a big bloody snot rocket shot out of your nose... GROSS!  This is how I imagined she was feeling and we felt really bad for her.

So we went to one of the largest vet facilities in NJ to get the tests done.  We were told there was a number of things this could be, bacterial, fungal, allergic or cancer.  After the tests we got good news!  The doctor saw a small mass on the CT, but she chalked it up to inflammation.  All the tests were clean including the biopsy "that had great samples".  So here we go with the same diagnosis... Rhinitis.  This doctor tried every medicine she could including: Doxycycline, Zithromax, Piroxicam, Prednizone, Zyrtec, Claritan, Benadryl... and still a whole lot of NOTHING!  Even another vet in the facility reviewed her case and told us the same thing.  This new doctor basically said, it is what it is, it sucks, and you just have to deal.  So that's what we did.

We were beyond frustrated and after spending massive amounts of money, we just cleaned the snot rockets and tried to keep her comfortable.  This went on for seven months, yes seven months of snot rockets and frustration.  What do you do at this point?  I had 5 vets tell me its *shrug* Rhinitis and there's minimal things they could do for me.

Until last week, Lexy took a turn for the worst and began hemorrhaging out of both nostrils.  We rushed her to Northstar, knowing that obviously something had gotten worse.  You feel helpless at this point, you knew something was wrong, maybe you could have stopped it, why couldn't they do anything!  Northstar advised us to redo all the tests, that there was no way to tell until they test, so of course we did.  These results were not as happy, Lexy was finally diagnosed with nasal cancer or adenocarcinoma.  We were relieved but crushed at the same time.  My poor lover pup was going through something awful and there was nothing I could do about it... or is there?

For those that know me, know I don't go down without a fight.  After the diagnosis I've been aggressively researching things that can help either cure or slow down the tumor growth.  I'm writing this blog to share the things that I've found and hopefully help someone else looking for answers.  There's another blog out there (Lucy's blog) that I found very helpful, so I'd like to pay it forward.