My pet has been licking the leg that the chemotherapy was administered. What should I do? Please call the hospital to speak with an Oncology nurse at your earliest convenience for assistance. Next, please discourage your pet from licking the area. The easiest method is to have your pet wear an Elizabethan collar when unsupervised. Licking can cause unwanted lick granulomas or aggravate a potential chemotherapy leakage injury. A nurse will ask you if you notice any signs of redness, irritation or swelling at the site. Any of those signs may be an indication that some of the chemotherapy may have leaked outside the vein. In the best interest of your pet, we will request that you make a quick physical exam appointment for your Oncologist to examine the area.
The Cancer Center at AVCC is located in South Florida in Broward County. 8920 W. State Road 84, Davie, Florida 33324
Place stool from the outside yard in a plastic bag and dispose into your garbage. While cleaning out a litter box, wear gloves during the first 24-48 hours. If using a flushable litter, you may continue to place urine and stool in the toilet for disposal. Otherwise, using a separate garbage bag each time before placing it in the regular trash is advisable.
What should I do if my pet starts vomiting or having diarrhea while on chemotherapy? If your pet starts to experience any vomiting, please withhold food and water for 6 to 12 hours. Then reintroduce small amounts of water first. Then if no vomiting is observed, you can offer small amounts of bland foods such as boiled chicken or hamburger with white rice. You can gradually reintroduce your pet’s normal diet, if there’s still no vomiting observed.
If your pet will be receiving at home oral chemotherapy medications, please have another responsible adult pill your pet. There may be some residual chemotherapy on the pills or in the vials which we would not want a pregnant woman to come in contact with. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask an Oncology nurse or your physician.
If you are administrating oral chemotherapy at home
If you are administering chemo at home, please follow these precautions.
My primary safety concern is for people who are mixing and handling chemotherapy agents, like pills, at home.
For those of you who are bringing your dog home after a chemotherapy session in the hospital, there is less risk, because you are handling just the urine and feces.
Sounds gross, I know, but we think the metabolites in chemotherapy drugs have been broken down by the patient’s body by the time they reach the urine and feces.
These metabolites are far less active than the original drug was. So, it’s a safer scenario than the one above.
Still, please use common sense precautions and follow good basic hygiene.
Signs Your Dog May Detect Cancer
The key thing that makes dogs so adept at detecting cancer in a person is their sense of smell. There are certain smells associated with different forms of cancer, and these can be present in our urine, on our breath, and even on bodily lesions caused by the disease. However, humans do not pick up these smells during the early stages of cancer, although they can detect them in the later stages. Dogs, however, have an incredible sense of smell and this enables them to pick up on cancer smells very early on, even at stage 0.
If your dog does smell cancer, it may act very different from normal. Some dogs will keep sniffing at you constantly and you may struggle to push your pooch away. Others may lick or even bite at lesions on your body – their way of trying to get rid of the cancer for you.
Others may constantly try to get your attention through paw tapping, whining while around you, and even staring or head tilting. You will also find dogs that simply want to comfort you and will snuggle up and follow you around more than usual. The actions of dogs that can smell cancer can vary based on the personality of the pet.
You may also notice some body language signs displayed by your dog if it picks up on the smell of cancer. Your pooch may sit and stare quite intently at you at times or it may tap at your with its paw. Sniffing at you is a common sign, as it is the smell of cancer that the dog primarily picks up on.
Another thing some dogs may do is follow their owners around more than usual or lie closer to them than normal. In many cases, a dog will pay far more attention to you when it senses and smells cancer, which may be its way of comforting you or alerting you to the fact that there is something amiss.
Some signs your dog will show if they detect cancer include:
More cues your dog will give if they detect cancer are:
What Side Effects Do Pets Feel with Chemotherapy: VLOG 93
One disease that has caused devastation over the decades is cancer. While a huge amount of research has gone into studying the disease, scientists are still looking for that elusive cure. It is not only the cure that is an issue – another problem is diagnosing the issue at an early stage when the chances of effective treatment are higher.
Often, the cancer is not picked up until it has moved into the more advanced stages. However, over recent years, experts have realized that our pooches could play a big part in this process with studies showing that they are able to detect the presence of cancer.