In the latest issue of Veterinary Medicine magazine there's an article about a dog with anal sac adenocarcinoma. This is a malignant tumor in dogs, and it's a sad story that ends badly for this little guy. Initially surgery was performed to remove the tumor, and it was repeated a month later because the darn thing grew back. During the second surgery, 40% of the anal sphincter was removed as well as part of his rectum.
Other than mild fecal incontinence (surprise, surprise) and bladder stones, which were not treated because they were not deemed to be causing any problems, the dog went home for a year and a half, at which point he had developed ribbon-shaped feces and was having trouble pooping. The tumor had not only reoccurred locally, but had spread to his liver and lungs.
Over the next 6 months this poor little dog went through chemotherapy, side effects of chemotherapy, feeling like crap, drugs, more drugs, drugs to treat the side effects of the first drugs, and eventually his kidneys shut down and he was mercifully euthanized.
The article is meant to be educational, in kind of a "this is the way it goes" presentation, with each actor - the surgeon, the oncologist, the clinical pathologist, the pharmacologist - playing their part in the drama of treating the tumor, um, I mean, the patient.
This article was tragic for me. I've treated some dogs like this with nutrition, correct diet, and homeopathy, and have had them live out their normal life spans in comfort at home. Not every pet will share the same level of success with treatment, depending on the state of the immune system, which plays such a huge role in these conditions. But when I think about my patients - at home, eating great food, benefiting from the gentle medicine of homeopathy - versus this little dog, who spent his last months of life ill, receiving injections of toxic drugs and having all kinds of pills shoved down his throat on a regular basis - it strikes me as very sad that there was no search for alternatives here. Even if homeopathy and other forms of "alternative" medicine wouldn't have offered hope of a cure, necessarily, well, this dog didn't get a cure from conventional medicine. He got suffering, from professionals whose oath states that their goal is to relieve suffering. And that's why I do what I do.
