Pet Cancer Survivor – Nellie’s Story

As part of Pet Cancer Awareness Month, Veterinary Pet Insurance is highlighting some of our policyholders’ pets that were diagnosed with, treated for, and survived pet cancer. Every year in the United States, millions of pets are diagnosed with cancer, yet many pet owners are unaware of the prevalence and cost of the disease. Our first story comes from VPI policyholder Lorie Clark of Toledo, Ohio whose golden retriever, Nellie was diagnosed with cancer last January.

Nellie is our almost 8-year-old golden retriever. We picked her out as a puppy as a playmate for our other golden, Lucy. In her puppy packet was some information about VPI Pet Insurance. We decided to purchase policies for both our dogs, and VPI turned out to be a very good investment. Lucy developed seizures, tore her ACL and then was diagnosed with cancer. I’m afraid it would have been very difficult to afford the care we needed to provide for Lucy without this coverage.

Lucy passed away from her cancer just 11 days short of her 10th Birthday. Nellie was lonely without her “buddy” but we were not quite ready to get another dog. During this time I became a volunteer for Assistance Dogs for Achieving Independence (ADAI). I had different dogs coming in and out of our home and Nellie was very happy to have some temporary playmates. I became a furlough mom to a yellow Lab named “Squirt” who was also being trained in our local prison. Squirt would come to live with us one week out of every month. Nellie and Squirt became best buddies.

In January of 2012, Squirt’s previous foster mom needed some “volunteers” for the grooming class that she taught at a local school. I took both Squirt and Nellie in for their beauty treatments. The student that was working with Nellie noticed a lump just above her right front paw. Just having lost a dog to cancer, needless to say I was very worried. I made an appointment with the veterinarian for the next day. They aspirated the lump and it showed Mast Cells. They put Nellie on Benadryl and Prednisone and hoped to decrease the size of the tumor before they performed surgery to remove it.

Two weeks later they performed surgery to remove her lump. During the surgery I received a call that they had found another lump inside of her mouth behind her front upper lip. Both of her lumps were in areas where there was not much skin to allow them to remove the lumps and get good margins. We crossed our fingers that the pathology would come back good. The pathology report said that Nellie’s tumors were Grade 2 Mast Cells both with dirty margins. Not the greatest of news, but also not the worst. We did an ultrasound to see if there was an indication of spreading to other locations and it didn’t seem to be the case.

Having VPI Pet Insurance allowed us the financial support to go to a Veterinary oncology specialist at a clinic 1 ½ hours away from home to look into additional treatment. Since we were dealing with two locations, we decided to try a round of chemotherapy. We used a combination of Prednisone, Vinblastine and Cytoxan. The Cytoxan proved to be too much for her so we eliminated that. We did a total of 10 chemotherapy treatments. Nellie tolerated the treatments very well. The only change we saw was she would be a little tired for a few days after her treatments and her coat thinned out. They did an updated ultrasound and checked the lymph nodes and it didn’t show any spread of the Mast Cell Cancer.

We had taken on Squirt as a full time foster for a few months and Nellie was enjoying the company. Squirt was getting ready to return to the ADAI facility for his final training to be a Service Dog and we didn’t want Nellie to be without a companion, so we decided to bring home a new puppy. Nellie finished her chemotherapy in May 2012 and we picked up her new brother “Floyd” in July. Her latest ultrasound in August looked good and her coat is beginning to fill in. Nellie is feeling great and enjoying the playtime with her new friend. We know how much VPI has helped us with our pups Lucy and Nellie, so we made sure that Floyd is also covered. You just never know what can happen with your pets and I would hate to have to deny help for them because I couldn’t afford it.

Thank you VPI!

Lorie Clark VPI Policyholder Since 2005