Graviola and Piroxicam for Teddy

This is our first posting and we would appreciate any comments that anyone would have regarding our Teddy. Teddy is an 11 year old Cockapoo that was just diagnosed with inoperable bladder cancer. He also was treated for the last 2 months for crystals in his bladder which we thought was his only problem. Unfortunately it appears that he also had this bladder cancer and this was also the cause of him having a lot of trouble peeing. His medication (he just started) is 5mg Piroxicam per day and we've just tarted him on Graviola (450 mg capsules - 3 daily mixed with water and put on his food).

 Our frustration is what to feed him. For 2 1/2 months he was on a strict diet of Hill's Prescription S/D to get rid of the crystals (unfortunately we did not know that he also had a cancerous tumor on his bladder). Last week whrough an ultra sound, we saw the tumor plus he stil still has some crystals. His food now is Hill's Prescription C/D wet & dry. Surely there's something I could make him that would be tastier and better for him without aggrevating the tumor & hopefully eliminating the crystals.

As with everyone on this site, we love our dog and have had some tough emotional times recently.

Any comments will be greatly appreciated - it's comforting to know that we are not alone with this terrible disease.

Teddy's Mom - Dallas

On 4/19/2007 Bettys Mommy wrote:

We were told to give our cocker spaniel Betty whatever she fancied.  She has also been on Hills food for the last few months to no avail. Nil by mouth for operation now. but had a Huge Tuna and Pasta meal earlier.. it was just what she fancied.

Hi and thank you for your response,

We still have not talked to our vet (hard to track down right now as unfortunately her mother is suffering from cancer and she is not in her office often these days). Our concern is with the crystals and the last test we had still showed evidence of some of these crystals.

We have not talked to the vet about a diet but all we have read (mainly on this great site) indicates that at this point a holistic approach may be the way to go. He does not like this food but was ravenous when we wrapped a little turkey around the Piroxicam pill to feed it to him this week. We are convinced that there is some connection to lawn fertilizers and his cancer. The only time that he is out is when we take him for walks in our area and the lawns in this subdivision look in many cases like golf greens. He has walked on these lawns for the last 10 years that we have had him.

We were wondering if there was anyone out there that had the unfortunate combination of crystals with bladder cancer and what worked for them - and obviously would be best for the dog. From what I see here this cancer will take Teddy in 130 to 190 days from the time it started to grow. Our guess is that this was about 90 days ago. As we just started to give him the Piroxicam on Monday and the Graviola today, we don't know what effect this will have on him in the long term.

The good news is that in the last couple of days, he seems much more frisky and we guess that this is due to the pain relief that the Piroxicam is giving him. Now we pray for the Graviola to take a run at the cancer.

There has been little change in his frequency and amount of pee. We have not seen a lot of blood and we were thinking that the blood that we are seeing is a result of the crystals.

Thanks again,

Teddy's Mom - Dallas

Thank you very much

Teddy's mom - Dallas

Hey there!  sorry to here about your pup.   My beagle was just diagnosed last week (he's male and only 3 years old) and it has been so hard.   we just started him on piroxicam this past weekend.   the first night, it made him so drowsy, he rolled off the couch.   i've switched him to a high protein diet of chicken, cottage cheese, tuna and rice (easy to hide pills in) and he seems to be doing great so far.   I've ordered pawpaw extract and i'm going to give it a whirl.   www.pawpawresearch.com and http://www.alternativecancer.us/pawpaw.htm contain great information on the research and it's benefits.   A very famous veterinarian at purdue university found tremendous benefits and they say it's much stronger than graviola.  just a thought.  

Good morning - only 3 years old - this is really tough - especially when he looks up at you with those eyes! We will run this diet by our vet as we need something to try and mask the pills in. The concern we have as well as Teddy still has crystals in his urine and we want to make sure that we don't feed him something that increases this problems as well.

Thank you for the great link to the pawpawresearch site. As we live in Canada, it could be a problem finding this but we will do our best to track down the extract.

I am just lisitening to the video presentation from Jerry McLaughlin on Paw Paw - very interesting !!

Teddys Dad - Pat