The Sam Simon Foundation miracle

A few years ago I noticed a lump on my 9 year old rescue dog Maya’s paw. It was only small, she was eating and playing normally, and I knew as long as that was the case, all is good.

I gave her probiotics, wheatgrass, medicinal mushrooms for dogs, marine phytoplankton, bone broth, MMS, ozone therapy, chiropractic sessions (more for her injured back leg), reiki, sunshine, and made sure we kept up our hour long hikes. I know I have forgotten some of the other things we did, but you get the gist! Everything was working like a charm. The lump even shrunk in size! To be clear, I didn’t do all of this at once, I worked intuitively and skipped some days too. She had minute amounts of different superfoods alternated on rotation in a syringe squirted under her tongue once a day, as I didn’t want to spoil her food by adding and changing the taste of it, and she continued to eat her food and had vasts amount of energy.

We did road trips to the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Utah, Malibu and etc.

Then one day it got sunburnt and split open. I visited the vet and they said she is too old for surgery, it’s risky. At the time it wasn’t worth the risk. It didn’t hurt her or bother her. The vet said to come back in three weeks if it didn’t close up. I used food grade H2o2 to ensure no infection, and it closed up within a few weeks.

All was great for a year, then 6 months ago it split open again. It was healing really well, and literally 1 millimeter from closing up completely, Maya got to it. She licked it into a massive crater! And if anyone knows anything about cancer cells, they don’t know how to repair themselves at the best of times, as they are already rogue cells!!

Being post covid lockdowns, my life had collapsed. I didn’t have the money to even visit a vet! She had to wear a cone every night. Yet every time the tumor was about to close up she got to it, again. This happened about 4 times and then I think the rogue cells just gave up. It was suddenly aggressive, doubled in size in a month, and she was starting to limp due to the size of it obstructing her ability to walk. When I used H2o2 it would fizz up unlike previous times, indicating it had bacteria in it on the surface. Freaky!
One day, at the groomers (Moonshine Grooming in Silverlake, they rock!) a man came up to me and said his dog had a tumor just like Maya’s, and it was removed by the Sam Simon Foundation. He told me to contact them. I did that day, and didn’t hear back.

A month later, when my parents were visiting from Australia, we were all freaking out because it was getting out of control. So I contacted the Sam Simon Foundation again, this time with a photo.

This photo to be exact.

They responded within 2 hours on a Sunday night at 10pm. Clearly they could see the severity.

The next day they called me twice and left instructions via voicemail regarding what to do to keep her tumor clean. We kept missing eachother on the phone, but they left further instructions including how to fill in the application form for surgery. At this stage, any risky surgery was better than what was unfolding, so I had to take the chance. Maya’s quality of life was now greatly impacted by this tumor.

Within a week my application was passed, and we had a biopsy and pre surgery appointment scheduled within that same week.

I arrived at 8am for our appointment, in a very low income area of LA, where they have a pop up mobile veterinary clinic in a van. I met the amazing angel surgeon Dr Rick Mori and his team. The plan was to do a biopsy, and test her vitals to see if it’s even possible to safely operate on her. I was instructed to pick Maya up in the afternoon. We discussed options, such as the possibility that Maya may have to have her front leg amputated, but at 12 years old, and with an injured back leg, that wasn’t an option I could entertain. I expressed that it would be better to simply not have the lump and even if it did grow back over time, atleast she has some relief, without additional issues negatively impacting the latter years of her life. I wouldn’t even allow radiation or chemo, as she is so sensitive to medication as is. I just want her to live out the rest of her years without being drugged up and with potential side effects. Dr Mori agreed. I really appreciate how he listened.

One point I forgot to mention earlier is, when Maya was 9 she was spayed and they saw zero lumps on the inside of her body. They had looked at her heart, inside her lungs and organs. So I already knew that this tumor was just on her paw. Plus she was still eating and playing normally. We had just done a two hour hike that very week.

So back to the day of Maya’s biopsy, I drove home distraught that she may lose her leg. This can’t be happening! But I assured myself that we would wait to see what the results were…
Hours later, when I picked her up, Dr Mori informed me that he had gone ahead with the surgery, because it was infected at the top level, he couldn’t leave it a moment longer! My head was spinning with shock and glee! Shock that the tumor is gone, glee that he saved her leg. Also glee that she made it through surgery, and I was taking my girl home.

Maya was still out of it from the anesthesia, as I carefully carried her to her bed after the long drive home. She slept the entire night. I didn’t wake her for her meds, as instructed, so I waited until the morning to start her on the prescribed pain killers and antibiotics. That’s all she was given, I was pleased that they kept it simple. When she was spayed the vet gave her too many and conflicting meds (conflicting as in, clearly stated as such on the provided literature, I guess not all dog owners read the small print??!!), and she didn’t react well, I had to take her off some of them at the time.

Around mid morning Maya started crying. I’ve never heard her cry like this so I called the emergency number. They assured me all was well since she had eaten some of her single ingredient dehydrated snacks and drank plenty of water. We were supposed to go to a pool party at the old place we used to live in. I obviously didn’t know Maya was having surgery when I agreed to go… But I decided to go anyway, and bring Maya, because this was her old home, she loves her old landlords, and at worst I’d put her bed in her old room and she’d feel comforted. My boyfriend was unsure that this was the right thing, but intuitively I knew Maya needed some extra love and a distraction for her pain! The minute we pulled up in the car she was smiling from ear to ear. She did her business on the way in for the first time since surgery, figured out how to walk with her bandages (which she had refused to do at home earlier!), and proceeded to work the room for pats the entire afternoon, and even though I had set up a retreat area for her, it was untouched. She was the life of the party not even 24 hours post surgery!

Being in her old home with people she loves shifted her energetically in ways I couldn’t have imagined. From this moment onwards her entire healing process became simple.

I would give her the meds twice a day. The caps have horrible toxic dyes in them which I can’t imagine being helpful to a small dog healing from surgery, so I would open the caps and empty the powder into a tiny bit of water, adding in a little wheatgrass powder to the painkillers for good measure, so that she would get other nutrients too, and syringe fed her. I would also give her reiki.

We went back to the mobile vet clinic to have her bandages rewrapped and she no longer needed them, as she was healing so well. No longer on pain killers, but still on probiotics, on day 11 I had to take her off them as she was no longer holding down food. The moment the meds stopped she was eating normally again.

Sometimes probiotics are prescribed for 10 days and other times 14. She was given 14 days, but when I saw she could no longer handle it, I put an end to it. This is where we have to work with both medicine and our intuition, and not blindly follow. All dogs are different. I checked in with Dr Mori too, and he was good with it.

She was still unable to be groomed, and she had to wear her cone when I wasn’t watching her. But she knew her tumor was gone and her energy was completely different, like a puppy again.

The stitches were removed. And three days later everything was completely healed except for a little pink skin.

Biopsy results have just returned, and sure enough she does have cancer, but the good news is it’s the type of cancer that doesn’t tend to spread around the body, it typically stays topical. Dr Mori feels he got all of the cells but these types of tumors normally need deep digging around them. Because it was on her bone and ligaments that wasn’t possible. Fingers crossed!

Today I look at Maya’s paw, and marvel over how Dr Mori did what he did without a skin graft. It takes serious skill. Maya is tumor free, and cone free! There are no words to express how grateful we are to the Sam Simon Foundation for their pre, during and post surgery care. All staff were amazing. It’s literally a miracle, the way they came into our life and saved the day!

Who is Sam Simon? Co-creator of The Simpsons, animal-rights activist, ardent vegan, philanthropist, art collector and poker champion. After he died of cancer in 2015 he donated his hundreds of millions of dollars directly into the charitable causes he loves. I remember reading about him at the time of his death, being blown away by such commitment to our fur babies, never once imagining that it would directly impact Maya’s life! And here we are, I wish I could thank him personally. The Sam Simon Foundation is here for anyone who has a dog or a cat and needs help. Please contact them here.

How do animals get cancer? Let’s acknowledge that our environment is a disaster for all life forms, between stress, pollution, atmospheric toxins and those invisible wifi frequencies. Then there’s toxic food, toxic water, toxic clothes, toxic beds, toxic dog treats and toxic toys that they have in their mouth and chew. The lawns they roll in are sprayed with Round Up (glyphosate), the roads their little paws walk on and absorb through are full of chemicals that I can’t even pronounce. Add in v a c c i n e s, medicines, not enough daily walks and sunshine, and do I need to go on? It’s pretty obvious to me that we need to be more conscious of how we live on our earth, and align more with how nature intended it to be.

I’m much more cautious, and read animal product labels like a hawk now. I have found the things that work for Maya, and guess what? It’s organic! For example I noticed whenever she had a certain treat she would get redness around her eyes, and then I realized she’s allergic to vegetable glycerin. She stopped consuming the products containing it and now only has single ingredient treats, and her eyes are back to normal. There are so many things like that, animals are no different to us! Once the root cause of things are found, the body tends to heal itself. Our greatest gift is learning to recognize the signs. I could go so much deeper and in many directions with this topic. Let’s just say it’s a process and we are all forever learning.

Maya had her first tumor free run on the beach this week. Her first in three years. For now she is living her best life, and she knows it! I share this chapter of her story in hope that it can help even just one person.