Indy has completed his first week of radiation with just a few small bumps in the road -- he had a little diarrhea the first two days, but it has cleared up, and the skin on his wound site is fragile and has broken open a few times. It's hard to keep him quiet enough to NOT bend his ankle and split the skin, but we're trying. The site cannot be covered due to the radiation so we're just keeping the area clean and dry.
He seems to really like the techs and specialists, and they seem to love him. It's nice because many of the people at the radiation center have rescued pit bulls.
Apparently, Indy goes right in for treatment, puts his front paws on the table, and doesn't make a fuss when it's time to knock him out. That's my boy!
For comparison, here are progress pics of his wound site (warning -- gross pics ahead!):
March 6March 20March 30April 6 Radiation starts
And here are the pics from April 8 -- he started to break his skin open on the 9th, so the small scab on the side is about double that size now.
(In the last pic you can see that his dew claw has healed well, too.)
The blue lines in the pics are the guidelines for the radiation. Normally, radiation is done from one angle and a large margin around the tumor site. Because Indy's tumor is/was deep and surrounded the front of his leg, he's getting radiation towards the top and bottom of his leg (picture this as him laying down on the treatment table). There is a small area on the back of his leg under his pad that is not getting irradiated to allow for drainage from his lymph nodes.
Indy's really been a VERY good boy through all this, especially during the travel time. He just snores away in the back of the Jeep and doesn't care how loud I play the music!
A few things that I've learned from driving in NYC:
1. Driving over the Throg's Neck Bridge in the fog in the early morning is REALLY cool and kinda scary -- it's like you're driving in midair through the clouds.
2. Driving over the Throg's Neck Bridge in a thunderstorm with crazy winds is not something I care to repeat any time soon.
3. The Long Island Expressway is ALWAYS busy. And the forsythia bushes are lovely this time of year.
4. Driving through NYC is like playing a video game with real cars -- you drive fast, you make instant decisions, and you don't leave any space between you and the car in front of you because a tractor-trailer truck WILL try to fit in that space.
5. New Yorkers make their own travel lanes if traffic is stopped.
6. Easy Pass rocks!
7. The Cross Island Expressway is really pretty, but it floods in the rain.
8. 684 SUCKS. Period. I've been on back-country dirt roads that are easier to drive on.
Never make someone a priority in your life when that someone treats you like an option.