Bonnie Doon's Story

Bonnie Doon is a 9 year-old Jack Russell Terrier who is always a very cheerful and lively dog, bouncing in the air with a happy face every moment of her life. She loves greeting people, loves her food and even loves coming to the vet hospital. It seems that everything around her just makes her happy. Just by looking at such a happy dog, no one would have guessed that she has been through so much in the past 12 months. Bonnie Doon has been such a brave warrior and she has never shown us a sad face even while she was sick. In February 2012, she had a fitting episode at home and she was then diagnosed with stage 1 insulinoma. Insulinoma is a highly malignant tumour in the pancreas, which causes Bonnie to have low blood glucose at all times due to an excessive secretion of insulin from the tumour cells. Soon after diagnosis, she had a massive surgery done at a specialist hospital in which half of her pancreas and some of the lymph nodes were removed. Tests revealed that the tumour might have already spread to her lymphatic system at the time of surgery. Despite having the massive surgery, Bonnie Doon was doing very well after that and went into clinical remission. Unfortunately in August 2012, the nightmare came back. On a routine health check, she was found to have low blood glucose again and an ultrasonography exam revealed that her nasty tumour has come back. This time Bonnie's insulinoma came back even stronger and not only the pancreas, her liver, guts and bladder were also invaded with tumour masses. This time with a stage 3 insulinoma, her oncologists expected that she would only live for 2 months. Even with the poor prognosis, no one has ever thought of giving up on her as she was just such a happy dog!  We started Bonnie on chemotherapy since September 2012 and she did so well on the chemo surprisingly! We have never encountered any side effect from her chemo, and she is still as energetic and happy as she used to be. Today is almost 6 months since Bonnie was diagnosed with stage 3 insulinoma, and Bonnie Doon is still the same Bonnie Doon, who runs and jumps at us happily every time she comes to the hospital. Last year, we did not expect her to survive through Christmas. But look at Bonnie now, she even gained almost 2kg since the start of the chemo, sometimes we would be thinking, maybe she is going to live for many months or even years? Maybe staying happy does play a role in stopping the tumour from spreading? If one day she is not bouncy anymore, everyone will certainly be really upset. Bonnie Doon is just a miraculous dog. We all love her so much. Let's all hope that she will stay healthy and happy.