A few months ago I wrote about Batman, the dog who became the first subject in brain cancer research trial at the University of Minnesota. 

Batman has a tumor called a glioma, the same kind that Sen. Edward Kennedy has. Both dogs and people are susceptible to it, and there is no cure. Researchers at the university are studying a cancer vaccine treatment in dogs in the hope it can also be used in humans. Batman had brain surgery in early August, and a series of vaccine injections since. But it will be some months before his doctors know if it worked. Last week Batman’s owner, Anna Brailovsky,  sent me an update on how he’s doing. It’s been quite the ride she said. Her  fear that the treatment is just prolonging Batman’s disease is regularly punctured by hope that it will work. Here’s what she had to say: 

It’s really been quite the emotional ride for us. There were periods when I felt completely hopeless, and wondered whether he would have been better off being left untreated until his time came. But that was always followed by an upswing.

The biggest set back we had was back in the early fall. At that point, I would have said he was 99% himself. There were very few neurological problems, he was full of energy, he seemed completely recovered from the surgery.

Then, he jumped out of the back of the Subaru, misjudged the distance (probably because he still had some perception problems on his left side) and smacked head first into the curb. He had a big seizure on the spot. I rushed him like mad to the clinic, where they said he had a severe concussion and had gone blind. For the next few weeks, it was almost back   constant accidents in the house, walking around obsessively in circles, hard time getting up. And the blindness was not going away. His pupils reacted to light, and they did an MRI to see if there was brain damage–but they found nothing on the optic nerve or the visual cortex.   It’s was incredibly sad–to think that we had possibly cured him of cancer only to condemn him to a life of blindness.

Then around Halloween, we started noticing that he was reacting a little to things around him–looking up at a flying bird, or a squirrel. Then, a few days later he suddenly jumped up on the couch. Since then, he seems to have recovered all the sight in his right eye (though I think he’s still pretty blind in his left) and most of his mobility.  And he’s definitely much happier.

As for the tumor, it’s still too early to say for sure. The MRI they did when he went blind was 100% clear–no new re-growth of the tumor. Hopefully, that continues to be the case. One thing that has happened is that he has had a very severe reaction to the vaccinations–every time they give him a booster, he has seizure activity the next day.  Recently, the oncologist had gone to a conference where he heard some doctors decribe a similar study with people. The people with the more severe post-vaccine symptoms had a lower rate of cancer regrowth.

Batman just had another booster on Monday,  and had two little seizure episodes yesterday evening after I brought him home. Then he ran around like mad, bumping into things and I had to lock him up in his crate to keep him safe. He finally fell asleep on the couch, though. This morning he seemed fine. I keep him in the crate when I’m at work and have a dog walker come in the afternoon to take him out. Poor little guy. It’s not quite the nice life he used to have when we were home all the time.

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