Been a fun week.
So... the dog's tumor is getting bigger, poor girl's teeth a all wonky because of it... but she's still eating eagerly so she gets to keep living.
But I did get to learn some interesting stuff... some of you may find this informative...
When we got her in december, she came with a prescription for something called Yunnan Baiyao, a chinese herb. the prescription was for 1 box, 16 capsules, 1 per day... no indication what it was supposed to do, and no refill.
When the yunnan baiyao ran out, we stopped giving it to her, because there was no indication to.
Well... last week, while going down the stairs with the dog walker, she fell and must have hit her tumor... lots of blood apparently came out her mouth (... lots is relative here).
Woman panicked and went home to watch her... the bleeding continued that night.
The next day I stayed home most of the day to watch her... the bleeding mostly stopped... then by evening it started up again. The amount of blood was probably equal to a human nose bleed... I don't consider it a lot, but for a 15lb dog, that's probably significant. She was swallowing a lot too... her poop went black from it.
Needless to say, that night we are in the emergency vet... the woman is bawling because she's afraid they will say it's time to put the girl down (the dog, not the woman)... she's brought food with her to feed the dog her last meal, etc etc...
The vet notices that the dog was previously taking this yunnan baiyao stuff... says it's a non fda approved medicine that may help reduce bleeding, and suggests we give her that. In fact, one of the other vets has a vial of the powder form they're willing to let us go home with.
Amazingly enough, after wrapping some of the powder in chicken skin, she eats it... the bleeding slows. We get some capsules, and it stops. Hasn't started up again.
I looked it up.... ingredients are protected by the chinese gov't.... no one is sure what the complete components are. Apparently this powder was used by the vietcong for emergency wound coagulation.... fascinating stuff. I'm curious how it works orally and topically... kind of waiting to get a cut to try it on myself.
Anyway... long story short... this stuff seems to have bought the dog at least another week so far....