I decided to update Alex’s blog tonight since Dr. Becker posted his photo on FB and I’ve received a few messages about how he is doing. I looked back and realized that I never made any entries after the last (sort of discouraging) one. And, today happens to be his half birthday, he is 8.5. So I have sadly taken off about 6 months. Sorry about that.

But, there is no more doubt or discouraging news. Alex is healed. We went back to VOSM around the end of October. BOTH shoulders had made significant improvement, and I got to see it for myself during the ultrasound. I was holding my breath waiting, expecting the bad news to come. But it never did. Dr. Debra Canapp was so pleased and she even admitted how surprised she was that he healed as nicely as he did. That first post-injection check up scared all of us.

While I was there I had some new films of his hips done since he had been fighting us on abduction ROM on his left hip. Thankfully I had a baseline since we did them at 2 years as well. His hip had the slightest bit of dysplasia and there was visible mineralization on his gluteal tendon. We discussed injecting the hip with the stem cells since we have them banked for the rest of his life. VOSM advised me that if things continued or got worse, it wouldn’t hurt to inject the hip, and since the cells would be grown for that injection, there was no reason to not inject the shoulders again too, to ‘top them off’ as Dr. Canapp said. It couldn’t hurt.

So I drove him back out the week of Thanksgiving for a second round of stem cell injections. Hip, bilateral shoulder compartments, R biceps, bilateral supraspinatus. We drove out with our friends Kathleen and Maika – Maika had TPLO done while we were there.

It is now a few months later and I am so happy to write that he is doing amazingly well. He has resumed agility, and all of the things he loves. He is still doing underwater treadmill therapy several times per week, along with other things to help him build and maintain muscle. He does his FitPaws ball work nightly, and we rotate between other exercises such as back-ups, waves, stair/hill work, and others. I sure wish I enjoyed exercise as much as he does.

Just jumped through his hoop and has the biggest smile!

I have entered him in an agility trial the first weekend in May. He will run in preferred, but I know that doesn’t matter one bit to him. He just wants to RUN. It will be an emotional and special weekend for all of us! Our rehab vet is coming out to watch him in action.

I am so thankful to everyone who helped us along our journey. I am not going to say the journey is over, I firmly believe ‘never say never’ and I know there will be days that he is sore, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someday he needs another stem cell booster. All I know with certainty tonight is that he is thriving, happy, and in love with life again. I can’t ask for more than that.

The attached photos were taken in Feb 2013. He’s reclaimed his title of the fastest dog in the house.

Since we got home from VOSM things have just been a little crazy. Mostly good crazy, but I’m ready for a vacation, and I don’t work. So…

Things were kind of mixed news for Alex. His right side was definitely his ‘bad’ side although both sides were affected. His left, by no means ‘good’ but better than the right. First they did the ultrasound on the left side. I kind of had a feeling that things were not ideal while they did it. Not a good feeling at all. Then they moved on to his right. After, we talked a bit before getting on the road. Long, long drive home.

Basically his right has shown a decent amount of improvement. This is good news considering that was the worst of things. However, his left has somehow gotten worse. Not at all what we expected… but of course things could have been worse and the right could have declined as well. All we could do was guess as to why this happened. Possibly he was off-loading the painful, bad side and his good side paid the price. We will probably never know.

I tried to just focus on the positive and I was doing an okay job with that, but when I read his discharge notes they didn’t make things sound very good. As of right now our plan is to keep his exercise/rehab protocol the same, but add in 2x weekly therapeutic ultrasound. At the 90-day post injection mark, we will start upping his activity every few days. If he is tolerating this well, we will ultrasound again 30 days later. If he shows any lameness or pain, he will get another stem cell injection ASAP. So we have two appointments pending, I just don’t know which one we are keeping and which one we are canceling. I sure hope we are keeping the later one.

He continues to do his underwater treadmill three times weekly, laser and therapeutic ultrasound twice weekly, has chiropractic every other week, two walks per day, and his round of leg lifts and other stationary exercises, along with full range of motion each night. He is on a whole buffet of supplements, adequan, etc. I do feel like we are doing everything possible for him. While being able to provide for him is a good feeling, it is very frustrating to think that every possible power in the world might not fix him.

Last friday was his 8th birthday. We planned to take him on a speedboat ride, but we had a gross, rainy day. We are planning on taking him sometime soon. After talking about what he would want, we came to the decision that he’d want to ‘go fast’. Combined with his love for water, it seemed like the right birthday treat for him.

On a happy note, he just had his twice annual checkup. Dr. Becker thinks he’s in great health (other than the shoulders), he had a good organ function/blood panel, negative 4DX, negative fecal, etc. And he is as cuddly and snuggly as ever!!!!!

Well, we are leaving at some point tomorrow for our 60-day recheck and ultrasound. I am so nervous and can’t wait to get it over with. We will find out if Alex is healing or not. If he is healing, great, we can celebrate and he will be back out 30 days later for his (hopefully) final recheck. If things still look good, then the 90-day mark should be the end of ‘recovery’ and he can begin training and conditioning to be a normal dog again. That would be amazing.

To recheck him they will do another shoulder ultrasound. On the initial ultrasound in July, they found that his biceps and supraspinatus (both of those are tendons in the shoulders) had lesions. The stem cells were injected directly into the lesions. Cells were also injected into the intra-articular shoulder compartments, the cartilage/interior where ‘rotator cuffs’ are located. Since this was part of his initial injury and surgery, we had to assume that repair was needed in the interior of his shoulders, although there was no way to tell this without doing an arthroscopic scope of the shoulders, which we declined. Since it was just injections, and the hard part of growing the cells was over with, it was no big deal to inject all of those locations.

So, we won’t be able to tell that the cells did their job (if there was a job to do) on the interior of the shoulders. We have to assume that if they are healing the visible lesions, then they are working their magic inside as well.

Worst case… if the lesions look the same, or even if they look worse, VOSM will have VA Tech re-grow more cells – they are already banked there, so no more will have to be taken from Alex – and it takes about 10-14 days to grow them. We would then have to drive back out and have him re-injected when the cells are ready. Then we’d begin the 30/60/90 day countdown again. I know that I could be facing bigger problems with him… he is still going to live a happy life…but, it would be so, so, so wonderful to have this just WORK and no need for more cells. He has been dealing with these shoulder issues since early 2009. It is almost 2013. I know I sound like I’m complaining, but I can’t help it. Anyone who knows him and his personality and passion for life has to understand how sad this has all been for us. I can’t bear to keep telling him no and keeping him in bubble wrap. He wants to live his life and enjoy it. He loves to try new things and is always up for anything as long as there is no vacuum cleaner involved.

So, please send your thoughts, prayers, good energy, healing vibes, happiness, etc to us this week. We have been very diligent with his recovery so I hope this is a positive week.

How perfect is this photo? Twice daily he and Grant (he knows him as “daddy”) take their walks. I love this.

End of a busy week. Tuesday, Alex got to see Dr. turner in the morning for a quick check up and a swim in the treadmill… We decided he is either extremely bored with his slow paced underwater treadmill walks or he is certain that it is broken and can’t figure out why it hasn’t been fixed yet. He can’t wait to start maxing it out at top speed again! Immediately after we saw Dr. turner at AEMC we drove Alex straight to Tops to visit Dr. McCauley for an exam. We spent almost 2 hours at Tops making sure Alex got all of his little knots and strains worked on. Overall Alex seems to be doing great but Dr. McCauley found a number of small things that she was able to work on. We didn’t let the holiday disrupt his 3 weekly treadmill visits at AEMC, we went back Wednesday and Thursday! On exam, Dr. Turner found some strain in Alex’s pectineus and we’ve been stretching and keeping an eye on it this week.

Not to be outdone by last week, this week is also full of vet activity… We are headed back to VOSM in Baltimore for Alex’s 60 day post-injection check up on Tuesday! We’re going to make a trip out of it, spend a day with a friend in Michigan and then visit Dr. Becker in Bourbonnais, IL on Friday morning… On the way home :-)

Wish us luck on Alex’s prognosis in Baltimore and we’ll make sure to keep the blog updated.

I haven’t written in eight days. We had a garage sale on Friday and Saturday, which was fun but a lot of work. Grant says he’s never letting me have one again (he said that the last three times too). Then on Sunday, all of a sudden I got very sick. I am still not back to normal, no idea what is going on. Grant was bad Monday morning along with me and he’s gotten worse over the last two days- so I have moved on from thinking I had something major wrong with me (gallbladder maybe?) and now I’m blaming the Chipotle we both had on Sunday for lunch… have eaten there a hundred times and never had a bad experience, so it is very odd, but all that we had in common when I first got really sick. On Monday morning I was so bad, I was having these surges of pain in my abdomen that literally took my breath away. I have a pretty high pain tolerance but this was miserable. If Grant didn’t have to go to the office all day, I would have went to the ER. I was too afraid of getting stuck there and nobody would be home to care for the dogs. I know, I know…

Alex is doing fantastic!!! He had UWT on Monday and Tuesday, and he goes again tomorrow (thursday). He is up to about 20 minutes now and while the speed is still slow, I know it is making a difference because he is staring to have some definition and I’m not just imagining that! Sherry hadn’t seen him in months and she agreed he looked good. Last night, I took him to see Dr. Carl and he couldn’t find much wrong with him! The same shoulder issue Carl always corrects was not even there. That is a big deal. I am not sure if the stem cell therapy is to thank, or if just enough rest/controlled exercise is the reason, but I’m happy either way. For now I’m going to believe it is the SCT and we will hopefully confirm that at VOSM on September 12. Which can’t come soon enough!

We have a family of kitties in the garage that we are fostering! A Monte look-alike named Feta, and her two babies. They are the sweetest little bunch of cats – they were born Aug 1, so just four weeks now and they are starting to be so fun. Exploring, wrestling, biting, watching everything. Speaking of watching, I could sit out there for hours and just watch them all interact. It is fascinating! I have only ever dealt with puppies, and cats are different! I am having a lot of fun with them. They arrived on Sunday. I have been meaning to get out there and take photos but I’ve been sick since they got here. I hope I am doing better soon because there is a lot I’m behind on, not just photos.

This was in a magazine in 2008 of Alex. I think it is from a competition in Huntsville, AL that he won with either a 7′ or 7’2″ grab. I love this – just found it in a pile the other day and it made me smile.