Tanner’s Cancer Treatment

That’s our three-legged boy Tanner undergoing radiation treatment two weeks ago. He has a tumor that began in his nasal cavity and then reached his brain. We took him to Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston for his treatment, and the wonderful team there kindly took these photos for us during one of his three procedures.

In mid-spring, we had noticed Tanner started sneezing a lot. Not all the time, not for sustained periods, but for him, it was unusual. At first we thought it was some doggie ‘reverse sneezing,’ which is in fact what it sounded like. It was also peak allergy season, so we wondered if he was reacting to airborne allergens. He’d sneeze a lot one day, then not again for several days, then he’d have another episode. We thought it was a bit strange but didn’t know what to make of it.

One evening after dinner we walked into the living room and were stunned to see blood splattered everywhere. On dog beds, 2 feet up on the wall cabinets, and sprayed across the floor. Weirdly, all the dogs were laying on various beds, snoozing or just hanging out. It was a quiet, serene scene — but also a little surreal given the blood.

Alarmed, Alayne and I began checking each dog over, one by one, literally from head to tail. Nobody was bleeding! We were baffled. Where did the blood come from?

Later that evening I happened to bend down to pet Tanner, and suddenly noticed a little dark discharge oozing from his nose. Hmm. I grabbed a tissue, wiped it off, and there it was: blood. So he had been bleeding from his nose, no doubt while having a sneezing episode. Hence the blood splattered everywhere and the spray on the wall cabinets.

We figured while sneezing he must have hit his head on the floor while laying down — we’ve seen him do this before.

Okay, so far, so good.

Another two weeks went by … with no more sneezing or any signs of bleeding.

Then one Saturday morning, I was sitting at my desk on the sun porch when I heard a dog crash against the wall on the other side of the room. I rushed over and found Tanner in the throes of a grand mal seizure. He had never had a seizure before. At his age — about 14, we think — we instinctively knew this was not going to be a run-of-the-mill idiopathic seizure.

After a few excruciatingly long minutes, holding him while he thrashed on the floor, he slowly began to recover.

I called our veterinary specialty and ER hospital in Burlington, BEVS, and after talking with the team there, we decided to take him to the ER that weekend for continued monitoring until our neurologist could see him on Monday morning.

When I checked him into the hospital, I told the ER doctor about the sneezing episodes and the bloody nose incident, but said I couldn’t make a connection between that and a seizure. But I wanted to make sure the ER doctor and the neurologist were aware of it just in case it was significant.

On Monday, the neurologist decided to do a CT scan to rule out other issues before running an MRI on his brain. She called that morning with the disturbing news: The CT images showed he had an aggressive nasal tumor that had reached his brain. That explained everything. There was no need for an MRI. What we needed was radiation treatment for the tumor, which BEVS couldn’t provide. In the meantime, the neurologist started Tanner on seizure meds to keep them under control.

So I asked the neurologist to send his records to Angell, where we had an oncologist we’ve worked with before who has treated two of our previous cancer cases. (One was blind Widget, who had lymphoma and who the oncologist had graciously accepted into an experimental drug trial after all of Widget’s other lymphoma treatments had failed. The other was our Chihuahua Jake, who had two rounds of radiation treatment for a nasal tumor and is still with us years later!)

A couple of weeks later I drove Tanner down to Boston for another full CT at Angell — partly to make sure cancer hadn’t spread anywhere else, and also to get the specific tumor size and location data to program the radiation machine.

The following week, I took him back to Angell so he could begin three days of radiation treatment.

Here’s another photo the oncology team took for us:

And finally this one:

He’s back home and doing well, I’m happy to report! He hasn’t had any more seizures, and you’d never have any idea he has a tumor that had reached his brain. His quality of life is superb, and we hope to keep it like that for as long as can. The oncologist thought the radiation treatment might give him another year — which given his age would be a great outcome.

Our previous nasal cancer case, Jake the Chihuahua, was given a prognosis of about a year after his first radiation treatment in 2021 at a specialty hospital in Connecticut (the closest one offering the service at that time). The oncologist at Angell then did another radiation treatment for Jake at the end of 2023. As I said, Jake has defied the odds and is still enjoying his Chihuahua-ness today.

But there are crucial differences: Jake had a nasal carcinoma that wasn’t as aggressive as Tanner’s osteosarcoma (an unusual tumor type in the nose but not unheard of), and Jake’s tumor never reached the brain. So Tanner definitely faces longer odds, but at least we know we’re giving him every chance.

So please keep your fingers crossed for this handsome boy!