spleen cancer

[IngerKlostergaard]

Hi all.

My male Ben z Polonin 2 years ago ( at the age of 10) had his spleen removed because of cancer.

This year my female ( and Bens littermate now 12 years old Brita z Polonin also had to have her spleen removed.
She reacted very well during the op. the assisting vet, an expert as for narcose, said that she never before had seen a canine so stabile, when a large organ was removed.
The spleen wasn't sent to a patologist, as the vets were absolutely sure, that the cancer was benign.

She then about 40 days later developed something that looked liked an extra puppy feeding vart, directly in the operation scar.

At first I wasn´t worried. I also wasn´t sure, that it had been there sice the operation.
When I observed it, I thought, that the vets had had to sort of drag her skin together and that the vart actually therefore was a misplaced puppy feeding vart.


One morning I observed that Brita during the night had been licking the "misplaced vart", and that there was a wee bee of blod on her stomack.
I took her to the vet and the vart was removed surcically.

3 weeks later on a Saturday morning my house looked like a slaugterhouse.
There was blod everywhere. Blod was dripping from my dogs abdomen, one huge drop pr. second.

I rushed her to the vet, another "vart" was sewn up, not removed.
Penicillin was adminstered, a compress was laid, and she went home.
Everything OK as for the rest of Saturday.

The next norning was an even worse nightmare.

My dog had overnight worn an Elizabetham collar and a compress on her abdomen. Blood was actually now running through her compress in a stedy stream from her abdomen.

She was very week.
Off to the vet, that had the sundy guard- this vet operated om my dog for two hours to stop the abdominal seeping blood.

She lost so much blod, that the red blod cells in the end was down to 16%
Blodtransfusion etc.
Long story ( not ended)

Any experience with cancer of the spleen in CSW's?

Inger

[email protected]

[Dharkwolf]

This is a very tough post to reply to.

First – let me say that my heart goes out to you. I would never want to have to go through what you just described.

I have no experience whatsoever with cancer of the spleen in dogs or otherwise, I do know that problems with the spleen can cause significant amount of bleeding.

I am not sure if the problem is the dog actually licking the scar itself – if that’s the case we’ve recently found a different kind of collar (than the Elizabethan collar) which works very well for this. I will try to get you some photos up by tomorrow so you can see what it looks like, but basically it’s a brace collar, the sort which you would use to support the neck after a neck injury. Such a collar works by reducing the mobility of the neck. When the neck cannot move as freely, the dog will then not be able to bite at whatever it is that bothers her. Not terribly comfortable, but it may work better than the Elizabethan collar depending on where the wound is exactly located.

Another thing which you may want to look into, or ask your vet if they have looked into, is coagulation speeds and time. It may, just possibly may be that your dog has slightly longer coagulation times – this will mean that she is more prone to bleeding and when she bleeds she may bleed for a longer time. Have you noticed anything like that in the past? Even if you haven’t it may still be the case, removing the spleen is the kind of intervention which can affect things like total platelet count etc. If there is a coagulation problem that can be treated separately and may be part of the solution to the problem.

I’m sorry I have no real experience with spleen problems to share with you – I hope that the story really is over and that Brita (and you!) will not have to go through the sort of scenes you’ve just described again. Our pup just underwent some relatively minor surgery, and you have just about described some of our worst nightmares.

Best of luck.

J.

(NB I found an example of the neck brace here - http://www.shredx.net/Jax%20page%202.htm - not exactly what we have, but it gives you an idea)

[IngerKlostergaard]

Dear Darkwolf thanks a lot for your reply.

Yes, this new type of collar appears to be much less annoying to a canine, than the old Elizabethian collar.
Thanks. I'll search the Internet for where to buy it.

My Brita received 90 ml. of live dog blod and a blod test done a week later shoved, that her percentage of red blod cells now had rised from 16 to 27.
Then I started calculating.

90 ml is about or a little less than one dl and as a canine this size holds at least about 4 liters of blod, I swiftly calculated that it would be at most about 2.5 %.

A rise from 16 to 27 % therefore indicates that my dogs own blodproduction actually was boosted and reinstaded by the blodtransfusion.
Still the number of her white blod cells are much too high.
They should be down to 6 but are still around 40.

Right now we have a daily appointment at the vets. Brita evry day gets a subcutaneus injetion of penniciline and an intramuscular injection of prednisone.

Brita is vary scared of all sorts of machines and silvery looking instruments. The vets had to shave her foreleg in order to obtain the blodsamples, and we had to press her down to the operation table.
Then totally humiliated she started crying just like a human child would.
Tears actually streamed from both eyes when she had to give her struggle for freedom and dignity up.

I have been owned and trained by a quite a lot of different breeds of canines before before these czw´s.
None of them ever shed a tear.
Any exeperience?

Inger

Inger

[Mirkawolf]

Hi there,

how it continues with your dog? Is she better now? Hope to hear some good news

Mirka

[IngerKlostergaard]

Hi Mirkawolf

Thanks for your continued interest and concern.
Long story.
Please write me privately at
[email protected]

[Cora]

hmm, my long answer from yesterday is not here- so I fear it did not work;

so a lot shorter this time - it is a pity no histopathology was performed from the cancer in the spleen, because this can be malignant; German shepards quite often get a tumor type called hemangiosarcoma - so I assume a TWH can get this tumor type too;
this cancer could go into the skin and it could cause a bleeding into the abdomen or a bleeding disorder...

do you have an abdominal ultrasound or do you know how the liver looks like ? do you have a platelet count or bleeding times ? do you have a blood type from your dog ? (a standard blood bag for a large dog is 450ml)

it is not possible to give a good medical information via a forum; but maybe you write me an pn?
Cora

[IngerKlostergaard]

I MISS HER So MUCH

I miss her licking my face, so that I'll get out of bed, when the alarm clock sounds or should sound.

I miss dancing around on the floor, and I even miss my own cheerful suggestions that she jumped unto my bed so not to have her interested nose sniffing my private parts, when I dressed after the morning shower.

I miss us in the morning going down the stairs, and my own stepping aside, so that she could have the broadest part of the stairs.

I miss my own tapping of the the garden tables, to make her jump up for the grooms, she so much loved.
I miss letting her superfluous underwool fur fly all over the neigborhood, while grooming, and so spreading her Byvantic treated wool and wonderful genes all over.
I miss all the birds, that came to collect her fur, that was brushed off her. I knew, that the waste of her Byvantic treated fur would make the birds nests safe as for lice, tics and other insects.

I miss her lying underneath the dinner room table, staring at me and trying to hypnotize me to stop eating and hand her the leftovers.

I miss her stepping at her food bowl, to make me fill it.

I miss her alternately and gently nose punching me, one of my jackets in the wardrobe, or a dog lease, to inform me, that it yet was dire time for an another walk.

I miss telling her to get off my bed or to at least lay so, that there also would be space for me.
I miss telling her " I'm off for work, look after the house". I miss her sad face at this message, and wonder if I in any could have had to tell her so, less often.

I miss her welcome back home totally frantic behaviour, her jumping up to lick my face etc. As her teeth were stronger than mine it cost me an uppermouth front tooth, still I miss her frantic with love welcomes.

I miss her lying on the kitchen floor, while I´m sawing tendons off a huge part of say beef. Or having her lying there
watching me make dinner or having her pick up the parts thatI spilled on the floor.
I miss having to keep my platter in my hand, while I walk around to turn off the radios and turn on the TV.

I miss giving her special goodies.
I miss the excitement she had, when she got a "goodie".
I actually now miss my own anger and irritation, when she just ran out into the garden to dig down a very special and perhaps expensive goodie. Or if the garden doors were closed buried underneaths say some laundry.

I look at the huge left over bags with special and often rather expensive goodies, that I didn´t let her have just because of my irritation, and I cry.
She on the very day she died, found much pleasure in digging them down; why was I so mean not to let her do it to with the whole lot?
Now, when I´m dogless, I actually ought to give them to other dogs, but I still can't give anything she loved to others.

I miss our morning walks, she never couldt wait for them, so I as a rule just took some skiing outfit on top of my PJ and leashed her.
I miss her early morning thorough smelling of the ground outside my house and smelling the air to find out what happened since last night, and if cats or strange dogs during the night or morning had treshpassed her territory .

I miss talking to her. She understood most everything I said. Even at the age of 5 weeks, she understood it, when I to some neighbors said, that already I had placed her dinner in a bowl in the kitchen. She sped inside the house towards her dinner, and all the humans present just stared bewildered at each other.

I miss relaxing and lying in the sofa with her, with her head in my lap, scratching her sides, head and ears, while we together watched say an English crime movie on TV, and as arule shared a bag of roasted peanuts.

I miss her lying in the lobby on the top of the cellar staris, expecting a goodie like say a frozen piece of calf bone, when I came back upstairs after having picked something up in the downstair freezer.

I miss the sweetest most loving and brightest creature that ever was.

Dear Pavel, please just don't cross her name out right now, I couldn't bear to see that.
When I shut off my lights and turn off the radios and TV, she still is around.
I loved and still love this canine to pieces.

I cannot yet have her crossed out and forgotten with one of those very cold and efficient red crosses

Inger

[Rona]

I'm very, very sorry. But she'll always live in your thoughts and in your heart....
Rona

[Juniorwolf]

It have just come to my knowledge that two siblings(brother and sister) both had operation for an "eruptered spleen" maybe due to cancer, does anybody know if this is a "normal" desease for CSW ? and if "spleen-eruptions" is genetic ?

Greetings Rolf

[michaelundinaeichhorn]

No, it is quite rare in CSW as far as I oversee it. But the most cases I have seen have been in German SHs. It normally is a desease of older dogs.
What can be a reason for a ruptured spleen is a hematoma, in a dog as lively as a CSW this can happen. You need histology to be sure. If it is genetic nobody knows as far as I am informed.

Ina

[Juniorwolf]

Originally Posted by michaelundinaeichhorn

No, it is quite rare in CSW as far as I oversee it. But the most cases I have seen have been in German SHs. It normally is a desease of older dogs.
What can be a reason for a ruptured spleen is a hematoma, in a dog as lively as a CSW this can happen. You need histology to be sure. If it is genetic nobody knows as far as I am informed.

Ina

Hi Ina,

Thanks a lot for your answer
The dogs was quit old as far as I can understand, I just thought it was a bit strange that it happened to two siblings and even more now when you say that it is rare in CSW, but maybe it is just a coincedence ?
I don`t know anything else about the dogs in question.
What is hemetoma ?

Greetings Rolf

[michaelundinaeichhorn]

A bleeding into tissue that is caused by a trauma.

[Juniorwolf]

I did not see the original post before now
But this is the dogs I heard of....

Greetings Rolf

[Angelika]

Sorry, error.