MILESTONE: 5 Months, No Seizures!

Tomorrow marks Rilley's fifth straight month without seizures and it has been nearly eight months since this whole adventure began with his first seizure on August 10th of last year.  We can't wait until we hit the next milestone in one month's time of being half a year out from surgery and with the way time has been flying by it will soon be here!

Interestingly enough, Sara had emailed Drs. Ohlfest and Pluhar tonight to let them know how well Rilley has been doing and in his response Dr. Ohlfest mentioned some positive news about his treatment.  It turns out that while they were doing some advanced testing on the blood that was drawn during our February visit they found that "tumor-reactive antibodies were induced by the vaccines."

It would appear that the vaccine injections have indeed made a difference and Rilley's immune system has produced it's own army (of sorts) to seek out and destroy the cancer cells that caused his meningioma in the first place.  As was evident by the clean MRI done in February these anti-bodies appear to have wiped out the few tumour cells that the team wasn't able to completely remove during surgery and now, in theory, the anti-bodies should keep this particular tumour from recurring.

This is fantastic news and we'd like to thank Dr. Ohlfest for passing that along to us!

The weight is over!

We have another positive thing to report. This afternoon we took Rilley to see Dr. Ewing as we had suspected that he had an ear infection. As it turns out we were right, but as Leslie Nielsen's character in Airplane! would say, "That's not important right now." What is important is that as with any vet appointment we had to take his weight. As Dr. Pluhar would tell you, and I seriously hope she is reading this, the scale has not been friendly to our four-legged companion of late. On our last visit to Minneapolis, the brain-tumour beagle tipped the scales at close to 50 pounds! 49lbs, 10oz to be exact. However, today the scale displayed a much friendlier 45.3 pounds!  Yes, he still has a little way to go until he reaches his ideal weight but he appears to be well on his way.

Congratulations Rilley!

Rilley the therapy dog...well, sort of

Last night Rilley decided to become a therapy dog of sorts.  You see, about a week ago our 10 year old daughter suffered severe burns to her legs and feet when boiling water spilled while preparing macaroni and cheese for lunch.  After spending three days in Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, she came home and spent a few nights sleeping with mom and dad.  Last night Rilley decided that he would help out.  He usually sleeps at the foot of the bed but he moved up and snuggled down right next to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and Rilley...almost looking like a stuffed animal.
Could "Comfort Dog" be his new calling?
(If you look closely, you can still see a tiny bit of his surgical scar on top of his head.)

As you can see by the look on her face, this made her feel quite special.  Rilley actually stayed like that for quite some time.  We're not quite sure how long, but we do know that it is longer than he has ever cuddled like that with anyone in the house.  Elizabeth also got quite the tongue-bath from all the kisses!

Good boy Rilley!

Giving Back - Calling all media contacts

As has become evident through all of our posts and conversations with people, Rilley's survival could not have been made possible without the hard work and dedication of everyone at the University of Minnesota.  Specifically Dr. John Ohlfest and Dr. Elizabeth Pluhar.  The work done through the Brain Tumor Program and the Ohlfest Brain Tumor lab cannot happen without the generosity of donations and grants.  In fact, Rilley's study costs have been covered by the American Brain Tumor Association, for which we could never thank them enough.

In an attempt to increase awareness of the Ohlfest Brain Tumor Lab and the research being conducted, Sara and I have started our own media campaign.  We are attempting to contact, via email, as many media outlets as possible.  We have put together a one page backgrounder that we include with all of the emails.  We would like to ask that anyone with media contacts take up the cause and tell them about Rilley's story.  Sara and I are not looking for any more exposure for ourselves, we had that when Discovery Channel and the Georgetown Independent did their stories at the end of November.  We simply would like the Brain Tumor Lab to garner further attention as it could lead to further philanthropic generosity.

If you would like to help, we would greatly appreciate it.  I have made the backgrounder document available as a .pdf via Google Docs and have included some download instructions below.

Thank you,
Roy and Sara.

DOCUMENT DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS

To access the .pdf file at Google Docs, click on the image below:

Once you reach the Google Docs page, you can download the original file by clicking on the File menu above the preview of the PDF file.

MILESTONE: Four months seizure free!

Today marks four months since Rilley's surgery to remove the tumour and the beginning of the road to seizure free life!  It seems that as each month goes by he's doing more and more.  For example, our stairs have a small landing to the side which Rilley used to use as his perch.  A place from which he can survey the goings-on of the household.  When he began to show signs of what we now know was the tumour, he didn't hop up there anymore.  This was most likely because he wasn't steady on his feet and had become more and more sluggish.

Well, over the past month or so he seems to have rediscovered his old look-out and he takes up his surverying duties on a daily basis.  Have a look:

Keeping an eye out for trouble...or, is that for ways to get into trouble?

Ok, maybe guard duty can be a bit tiring!

 

A Momentous Day

Rilley fighting the after effects of his MRI anaesthetic.
Getting sleepy...very, very sleepy.

This past Thursday (Feb. 10) marked a momentous day in our journey with Rilley.  It has been six months since that awful day in August when Rilley had his first seizure.  When he was diagnosed a month later with the meningioma the prognosis was so bleak.  Even if we had employed all therapeutic options available to us (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, anti seizure medications) realistically we were only looking at having Rilley with us for 6 months.  As it was explained to me the problem with these types of tumors is not their ability to spread, but rather the fact that even once removed they grow back so quickly and start to put pressure on the brain.  Further, there comes a time when the seizures can no longer be adequately controlled by medication.  This is a problem which we were already starting to see with Rilley before his surgery.  This was when Roy & I started having very serious discussions about Rilley's quality of life if the seizures continued.

Sleepy pooch.

For us, we didn't have to watch Rilley's seizures continue because shortly thereafter he had his surgery and started receiving his immunotherapy vaccines.  The amazing combination of this treatment is that it removed the tumor and the vaccine got rid of the small amount of tumor cells that were left behind and has stopped any further tumor growth.

We are so thrilled that thanks to the amazing combination of surgical skills and research of  Dr. Liz Pluhar,  Dr. John Ohlfest, Dr. Matthew Hunt and the entire staff at The Ohlfest Brain Tumor Lab, Rilley will be with us long past the 6 months since his first seizure. 

Congratulations my little pooch!!!  Let's see what mischief and merriment you can create for us all in the coming 6 months!!!  Watch out Dr. Ewing the real Rilley is back!!!

Jake the Warrior

The amazing thing about this whole blog concept is that you can track referring sites that point to your own.  It was through this feature that Sara came across another dog stricken with a brain tumour.

Jake the Warrior

Jake is a three and a half year old Boston Terrier who has a lot more in common with Rilley than simply his tumour.  They were both adopted from Shelters, although Jake sounds like he had been bounced from place to place and home to home before his owners Frank and Jenn took him in.

He has also been accepted into the Brain Tumor Program at the University of Minnesota and they are starting their 20 hour trek there on Sunday.  His surgery is scheduled for this coming Tuesday and we would like to wish them a safe journey and all the best for Jake!  We know that they could not be heading to a better place for help!

If you would like to visit Jake's blog, go to:  http://jakethewarrior.blogspot.com

We're glad that they came across our little blog and would like to thank them for keeping Rilley in their thoughts.  Had they not been kind enough to post a link on their blog to The Chronicles of Rilley we may never have come across Jake's story!