Axel’s Story

Axel’s story begins over 3 years ago, when he began having collapsing episodes. He would just lay there, panting, not moving, or when he did move he would cry. Ever time i took him to the vet, i was told he just had an upset tummy. These 3 or 4 episodes passed relativity quickly, with only a few hours of down time. After countless trips to the E-vet my vet begin to think that i was being a hypochondriac. I was starting to wonder if i was myself, but i knew something was wrong. They did several blood test and X-rays and could only find a slight UTI. This was treated for months and months with antibiotics until one day on 12-12-09 Axel had another episode where he collapsed and was unresponsive. I walked in the door, he didnt get off the couch and i knew something was wrong. When he did stand up, after a lot of coaxing on my part, he immediately fell over, breathing hard and shallow, and then finally, became unresponsive. I called my E-vet, it was 130am, and he acted as if i was over reacting. After waiting an hour for the vet to get to the office, Axel was doing worse. His gums were pale and he was in complete shock. The vet had no idea what was wrong with him, ran some blood test, and found nothing out of the ordinary. I left axel overnight, not expecting to see him alive again. I got a call the next morning that axel was doing good, he was awake and responsive. They had done nothing to him except give him fluids. They did x-rays, ran more blood work and could not find any issues. The doctor thought that the UTI had went to his kidneys, even though blood work showed no infection. After a few days of recovery, Axel was back to his normal self again. A month went past before he had another small episode. At this point i was recommended to an internal specialist over an hour away from where i live. I took Axel to the specialist on March 15th, 2010 and within 15 minutes the Doctor told me that he had a tumor on his spleen. He told me that he was bleeding out occasionally, and that is why he was collapsing. He would bleed out and then reabsorb the blood, and be ok, until it was such a large rupture that he didnt recover. He also said he had a 50% chance of cancer. Axel had his spleen removed on March 15th, 2010 with no complications. He came home and was back to his normal self within a day. i got a call on March 19th from the doctor, confirming that he had stage 2 Hemangiosarcoma. I was devastated. I had been reading online about it, fearing that he would be diagnosed with it, and i knew that prognosis was very poor. We did IV chemo and oral chemo treatments, with more in the works, and i have switched over to low carb high protein and fat diet, with Fish oil, vitamin and Bone meal supplements. Axel is doing great. The chemo went well, and didnt affect him, in fact he LOVES going to the vet. It cost a lot of money and time, but its worth all of it to have him around. Axel gets bi yearly ultrasounds, the last ones which showed no signs of metastasis! He gets another one tomorrow, actually. He did have some complications from chemo and has some heart issues, which is is on sotilol for and almost back to normal. The vet did say that he would be in congestive heart failure within 6 months, and that was over a year ago as well, he is still going strong, and the meds seem to be working wonders for him. Every vet he has (and he has a lot) call him a “miracle” We’ve made it past our 2.5 year mark, which everyone said wouldnt happen. Each day is a blessing and is treated as so!