Courageous Toby and his Radioactive Adventures

By Scott Lackenby | Dated June 6, 2017

Toby is a sprightly eleven year old Staffordshire Terrier who is truly courageous! He has had numerous surgeries to remove malignant skin tumours called mast cell tumours that have occurred on his body. These usually occur immediately underneath the skin.

His most recent surgery involved a skin tumour that grew on his left chest wall. It was not able to be fully excised as it would have required ribs to be also removed as it had grown close to them.

To try and improve Toby’s chances of survival and eradicate the tumour further he went to Brisbane for radiation therapy. Toby travelled to The Brisbane Veterinary Specialist Centre as there is not a Sydney centre that have the facilities at the moment to do this very specialised treatment.

He completed a 3 week course of radiation which involved general anaesthesia and a radiation beam targeted at his surgery site every second day to try and irradiate the cancer cells that could not be fully removed through surgery. This procedure does not cause pain but Toby needed to be completely still whilst the beam was doing its job.

What makes Toby special is that he also tends to get a bit nervous about being away from home (like a lot of us) and he bravely survived (with some anxiety medications on board) his time in hospital and made many human friends at the BVSC in the process.

We wish Toby and his parents (Jennie and Phillip) all the best and congratulate them on doing such an amazing job in getting him to Brisbane and trying to give him the most successful outcome possible.

Toby doing well after surgery! He is always the happiest patient!