Ultimate Pet Therapy
- Sharon Osbourne shared a series of videos of her cute pooches
- Osbourne battled colon cancer in 2002 and underwent a preventative double mastectomy in 2012.
- Pet therapy can help cancer patients cope during treatment.
In a series of videos, Osbourne gave us a “behind the scenes” look into her special announcement that CBS’ The Talk is coming back to our screens. However, setting up for the announcement wasn’t necessarily an easy start. In the videos, Osbourne tries to corral her multiple dogs to make the message a lot more adorable, but the pooches clearly were focused on play time.
Read MoreOsbourne definitely knows the power of pet therapy, and even after cancer treatment she still takes time to snuggle them as much as possible. Osbourne was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002 after her husband, Ozzy Osbourne, pushed her to go to the doctor since she hadn’t visited one in three years. After the diagnosis, Osbourne underwent surgery, but later was informed that the disease had spread. She then went through chemotherapy treatments and was declared in remission.
Osbourne’s cancer journey didn’t stop there. Osbourne went through genetic testing in 2012, and discovered she had a high risk of being diagnosed with ovarian and breast cancer due to her genes. To shut down any possibility of a diagnosis, she underwent a preventative double mastectomy.
The Power of Pet Therapy
There’s a lot of information to take in and steps to take during cancer treatment. Plus, there’s a lot of stress and anxiety that comes with a diagnosis. It’s important to take a moment to appreciate the little things, and pet therapy is the perfect approach.
A number of cancer centers partner with animal foundations to provide dogs that will visit cancer patients during treatment. This helped Richard Marks’ bone cancer treatment go by so much quicker. While undergoing chemotherapy, he had to spend several hours at the hospital five days a month and got bored during the process. Luckily, the pooches that visited him made those hours fly by.
“When I’m doing the chemotherapy and I’m waiting and time’s going by and maybe I’m worrying about my numbers or how my treatment is going and all of a sudden a cute little dog goes by, I’m not thinking about those things,” Richard tells SurvivorNet. “I’m only thinking about that dog and how that dog is going to feel it in my lap. So that’s one of the greatest things. It takes me out of my world. I’m not concerned about me at that moment.”
Richard Marks says pet therapy helped distract him during bone cancer treatment
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