Cancer And Your Pets: How To Protect Them , Catch It Early If It Occurs And Making Sense Of Often Sensational News About Cancer

These are the recommendations we were given for preventing cancer in pets:

• Maintain ideal body weight and an exercise program (just like for humans!)
• Good dental hygiene-- it is possible to brush cats' or dogs' teeth (dental inflammation-- as well as FIV infection-- is a risk factor under investigation for oral tumors in cats)
  
• The single biggest way to prevent breast cancer in dogs is spaying before the first heat
• Keep pets with white fur out of the sun
• Eliminate exposure to second hand smoke
• Eliminate exposure to old-fashioned flea dips and herbicides
• Don't over-vaccinate cats for FeLV or rabies, follow current guidelines and use vaccines without adjuvants if possible

Guidelines we received for helping owners catch cancer early:

• Owner education and involvement: teach owners cancer warning signs (lumps/bumps, blood in urine, wounds that don't heal, persistent cough); teach owners how to do dermal mass mapping and have them map masses on their pets onto anatomical diagrams every month or on some kind of periodic schedule; show owners how to examine areas in their pet where cancer is prone to develop or might manifest itself early on and then have them do these exams frequently: mammary glands, oral cavity, interdigital spaces, lymph nodes, ear canal, anus and prepuce/vulva; lastly have owners closely observe bowel and urinary habits for any changes
• Screen geriatric dogs and cats (>8 years by most standards) by doing blood work and urinalysis as part of the office visit; also more frequent office visits for geriatric animals (twice a year instead of once a year)
• Frequent oral exams and dental cleaning (as mentioned above, oral tumors are relatively common in cats)
• Screening for cancer specific genetic abnormalities such as hyperparathyroidism in Keeshonds-- these kinds of tests will become more available soon

Although not widely practiced we also got the following screening guidelines:

• Small, older, female dogs: increased risk of getting bladder cancer. Abdominal ultrasound every 3-6 months; possibly feeding cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli since they contain the active ingredient isothiocyanate-- this is still under study.
• German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers: increased risk of hemangiosarcoma. Abdominal ultrasound every 3-6 months. Possible splenectomy (? more research needed)

And here's some things to keep in mind when reading about studies on cancer in the news and trying to assess risk factors:

• In most cases, risk factors do not cause the disease directly.
• Risk factors are best used to place individuals in high risk groups for monitoring.
• Recommendations for reduction of exposure to known risk factors can reduce the average cancer risk in populations of animals and is useful from a population health perspective.
• Risk factors do not predict an individual animal's level of risk (or person for that matter). Nor is decreasing risk factors highly protective for a single individual. Risk factors are really a tool for determining cause of disease, increasing whole population/herd health and screening high risk individuals to try to achieve early intervention.
  

Evaluating risk factors:

• Look for multiple, independent studies with the same result (don't jump to conclusions based on one study reported in the media!)
• There is a plausible biological explanation for how the risk factors affect disease (lately there have been a lot of studies on humans reporting that drinking coffee reduces prostate and other types of cancer but I have yet to hear a good biological explanation for this so it could be no one knows the mechanism or it could be a coincidental correlation that is meaningless)
  

Thanks Dr. Rod Page and Dr. Barbour Warren for your lecture on cancer risk factors!

Winter Storm Poetry

I thought I'd start the week off with some winter storm poetry. This poem, "The Snow Storm," is by Edna St. Vincent-Millay.

No hawk hangs over in this air:
The urgent snow is everywhere.
The wing adroiter than a sail
Must lean away from such a gale,
Abandoning its straight intent,
Or else expose tough ligament
And tender flesh to what before
Meant dampened feathers, nothing more.
Forceless upon our backs there fall
Infrequent flakes hexagonal,
Devised in many a curious style
To charm our safety for a while,
While close to earth like mice we go
Under the horizontal snow.
*

I love the last lines, if people are like mice, then the hawk, if not impaired by the storm might swoop down on them! The vulnerability of people in storms is like mice in the open being hunted by hawks. I also love the rhyme of the poem, the rhythm of the opening lines.

Vacation: Next Stop The Virgin Islands

I am incredibly lucky to be heading off for the Virgin Islands early tomorrow morning, courtesy of my mom. I am going camping with her and her best friend, who I will simply call SocialWorker.

Last time I had a week off with no studying was the second week in August, when I had finished my summer research but not yet started vet school (it was the week before vet school started). I flew back to California and went camping in the Sierras with SelfSufficientNurse, her husband and daughter, PrecociousKid. It was wonderful. Here are some photos from that trip to the Sierras:

Here's one of my favorite pictures, of PrecociousKid near our campsite:

And the sunsets were breathtakingly beautiful:



Although I will be gone for a week, I have scheduled several posts so my blog will still be active!

My Aunt's Cats: Silky And Pumpkin

Silky (top) is fourteen years old and spends a lot of time sleeping and cuddling with my aunt. He's been losing weight and has had a decreased appetite since his brother, Velvet, passed away this summer from liver cancer but has perked up quite a bit since Pumpkin's addition to the household. Silky developed a heart murmur around age eight but it is low grade and has not gotten any worse over the years. He is a very sweet older cat.

Pumpkin is my aunt's new cat, acquired to keep Silky company. He is a bit of a bruiser. I'd say he is a dominant cat. He was an alley cat, an unneutered tom, until he was taken in by a rescue group. Since he was neutered so late he has a big block head, which is rather handsome.

Pumpkin's had several nebulous veterinary problems. The rescue group reports he was sick for a long time while they had him, with what no one knows. He tested FIV/FeLV negative but I'm not sure if he was tested before or after his illness. If it was before I don't know how accurate it is. He was proclaimed healthy and adopted out, but when my aunt took him to the vet the day after she adopted him, he had a whopping heart murmur (which he still has, I'd say 3/6 or 4/6 but I can't determine PMI because he is wiggly and purrs a lot and I don't have much experience with that kind of thing). Pumpkin also has GI problems-- right now he is on i/d (bland diet) and doing fine but he doesn't do as well off of it and has had bouts of both vomiting and diarrhea. I'm eager for my aunt to perform a bunch of diagnostics and get to the bottom of it but she probably won't bring him in again until the spring if he continues to do well.

My First Day Of Break!

Above: Me, on Wednesday night, with a heart throb of a pit bull at Southside, the low-income veterinary clinic run by Cornell students once a month. (Yes, I went and saw cases the evening before my final exam. I think the clinical experience is more important than the few points I might be losing by not spending the night cramming). If I'm counting right, this is my fifth time at Southside (since I started going over the summer) and my third time seeing patients as a clinician. I'm starting to feel more comfortable wearing a white coat. I even think I look pretty professional!

Today is my first day of real break since November, when I finished block 1 (and that wasn't a fun long weekend since I was worried I hadn't passed). The holiday vacation in California was heavenly, but I still had schoolwork since it was mid-semester, and I worked several shifts, which while fun was also exhausting.

Today I have no work hanging over my head, no shifts and no place to be. I'm hanging out in Glastonbury, CT while my aunt works. Right now I'm at the local Barnes and Nobles to take advantage of their internet connection. I spent the morning reading a novel and writing some cards to friends. Then I headed out to the local Goodwill and picked up some nice dress shirts for my shifts in the hospital (I'm taking a class that consists of several shifts in the Community Practice Service during distributions and I have to dress up for it). I also really enjoy the hunt of thrift store shopping.

Tonight I'm going to chat with my aunt, read some more and maybe watch a movie. It's so nice to have a chance to relax.

Road Trip: Ithaca To Northampton

Disclaimer: As a vet student I must advise you to never drive with your pets loose in the car!


I finished my block 2 final this morning. Yeah! I'm now halfway through my first year of vet school.

This afternoon I took a road trip from Ithaca to Northampton, hitching a ride with my classmate SuperLesbian (from Northampton) and her cat, SuperLesbianCat (from Ithaca). In real life her name is not actually SuperLesbian, but she and her cat do have the same name.

SuperLesbianCat is very mellow and spent the entire car ride on either my lap or SuperLesbian's lap. She did remember to look first right and then left anytime we turned:

And she seemed to enjoy watching the scenery:

While difficult to capture from a moving car, here is a typical upstate New York barn and silo, albeit just after we crossed into Massachusetts:

And here is the view just outside of Northampton:

Haiku: Snowmelt

the snow starts to melt
little dimples form like on
toasted marshmellows

(Sorry to be laconic folks but I've got my block 2 final exam tomorrow)