BY BILL SNYDER
Oklahoma’s Will Rogers once said that “…the best doctor in the world is the veterinarian.
He can’t ask his patients what’s the matter. He’s just got to know.”
Regular checkups are vital for the health of our pets. Animals benefit greatly from preventive care, and your veterinarian can likely handle almost any issue in his or her office. Sometimes, however, the diagnosis requires more in-depth treatment.
Did you know that dogs and cats can get cancer, just like humans? Luckily for local pet owners, Melinda Upton, DVM, DACVIM (Oncology), practices in Tulsa with a long track record of improving the quality of life of our dear companions.
“You think that treating cancer patients is going to be really sad every day, that everybody is going to feel terrible, that they’re going to have terrible side effects,” Upton says. “These animals come bouncing in to get their treatment, and they go bouncing out, and when their cancer is in remission, they for the most part feel really good.”
Upton has been a practicing veterinarian since 1991. She graduated from the veterinary program at Oklahoma State University and completed a residency at the University of California, Davis, where she focused on oncology. The Tulsa East Central High School grad returned to Tulsa in 1998 and is the only pet oncologist in Tulsa.
“I knew I wanted to be a vet at 5 years old,” Upton says. “I have a love of animals and a love of science. You figure out why somebody feels bad, and you make them feel better. It’s like being a pediatrician; dog owners worry as much as parents do about their kids.”
While many of her classmates had residencies at regular veterinary offices after graduation, Upton’s advisor recommended oncology, something she hadn’t studied at OSU.
“It wasn’t anything I’d experienced in vet school because there wasn’t an oncologist there,” she says. “These are all dogs that have really committed owners; they’ve had excellent lives. I’m not caring for animals that have been mistreated or had rough experiences. These are all well-loved, wellcared for dogs, so it’s rewarding to help them with their final days and help them be as happy as they possibly can.”
Upton’s clinic is located in the Animal Emergency Center building just off 41st Street in Tulsa, between Mingo Road and Highway 169. She is a cancer and internal medicine specialist who treats dogs and cats that have been referred to her by veterinarians in Oklahoma and surrounding states.
“Any living thing can get cancer,” Upton says. “Dogs and cats get a lot of the same cancers that we do. Yes, there are differences with humans—just by the differences in species, but a lot of it is the same. We see bone cancer, we see leukemia, we see lymphoma, we see lung cancer, all the same things you think of with people. White cats can get skin cancer from too much sun exposure; all those same things that people get, animals can get as well. Things move a little faster in animals, just by nature of their shorter life span, things are a little more aggressive than in people.”
Upton says her goal is to improve the life of the pet as much as possible and give it as much quality time with its human as she can. Treatment options are very similar to those used on humans.
“You may have a few different drugs, but the principles are the same,” she says. “We see it a lot more now because we have such good general health care for animals. Many are living to be a lot older. Cancer tends to be a disease of older animals, just like it’s a disease of older people. That’s not a hard and fastrule, but we do see more as our pets are living longer because they’ve had such good medical care.”
Chemotherapy, immunotherapy and surgery are a few of the tools Upton has at her disposal. She thoroughly examines her pet patients using state of the art technology. Upton said that while there are potential side effects to treatment, the risk is small.
“It’s important for people to know that while those side effects are possible, they are not common,” she says. “There’s probably a five percent chance of side effects from chemotherapy. For the other 95 percent, if they have more than one or two kind of ‘off’ days—sleeping a little more, appetite a little down—we’re going to make some adjustments, but most dogs do exceedingly well with chemotherapy, so you’re not making your dog miserable while trying to make them feel better.”
Upton says that as with humans, immunotherapy holds great promise for pets.
“One of the things we’ve been using the most is a vaccine for melanoma,” she says. “Dogs get melanoma in their mouth—it’s not a sunlight cancer. It’s a nasty aggressive tumor, and the average survival if you remove it is about six months. Chemotherapy doesn’t touch it. It’s a horrible cancer. One of the first cancer vaccines that was produced teaches the dog’s immune system to go out and find melanoma and kill it wherever it may be.
“Because it’s a vaccine and not a drug, it’s not toxic. It’s something that has no appreciable side effects. For that particular tumor, the average survival is six months just doing surgery. With the vaccine, at two years we still haven’t reached average survival. So that means a whole lot more than half the dogs are living beyond two years.”
Traditional surgery is an option as well, of course. In any case, the goal is providing years of additional pet companionship.
“There are some cancers that can be cured with surgery,” she says. “You can remove the tumor, and you may be done with the problem. There are some you can’t cure, but you can buy years of good, quality time. There are some cancers that we don’t have great treatments for, that progress in spite of everything we try. That’s particularly true of any cancer that’s spread to multiple places; they’re infinitely more difficult to treat. As in people, the same is true for animals. Early detection is really the biggest predictor of success.”
No one wants their pet to get sick. Upton says that early detection gives your animal the best chance of survival, and a healthy diet and exercise are important as well. There is even circumstantial evidence that animals are negatively affected by secondhand smoke.
“I think the first, most important thing is your annual exam with your veterinarian,” Upton says.“They can do a good, thorough physical. Of course, if you’re seeing lumps or masses anywhere on the outside that aren’t going away in a short time, or an illness that doesn’t resolve, they need to be checked out. If you have a dog that’s vomiting, that can be caused by a million different things, and cancer is probably the least likely thing that could be doing it, but get that dog seen by the local veterinarian, and they can rule out all of the typical, common things.”
Tonia Smith regularly drove from Fayetteville when her dog Sashee was being treated by Dr. Upton for lymphoma. Doctors gave her dog three to four months when first diagnosed. She credits Upton for an additional year and a half of quality time with her pet.
“Dr. Upton had great information, a patient staff and was always available to give advice,” Smith says. “They were open and honest about the treatment for my baby. It was very emotional, but if I had to, I’d definitely go again.”
Laura Morgan also credited Upton’s clinic for helping each of the four dogs for which she sought treatment. Morgan works in a human oncology practice and says that she has as much confidence in Dr. Upton as the human oncologists with which she works.
“They were absolutely lovely,” she says. “They were very accommodating and treated me like part of the family.” Upton loves her job and says that the look on the pets’—and humans’—faces make it all worthwhile.
“A successful day is when all of my patients that are getting therapy come in with their cancer in remission, are tolerating their therapy well and go out the door just as happy as when they came in the door,” she says. “It’s amazing when you have an animal come in that is desperately sick because of their cancer, you treat them and then you see them a few days later and you see a bouncing, happy dog or cat that is on the mend.”
Dr. Melinda Upton’s office is located at 4055 S. 102nd E. Ave., in Tulsa. For more information, call (918) 663-3994. ■
