This is very hard for me to write. (trying to resist crying as I think of all of this) I'm hoping a vet or something stumbles on to this with some better insight than I'm having now.
I am the proud mommy to 3 cats, two of which I've had my entire life, and one I adopted when I married my BH. I've also been the proud mommy to bunnies over the years, but they suffered health conditions that did not allow them to spend as much time with me, or me with them as I would have liked.
This is my very first baby, my girl, Belldandy. She was the first cat I ever owned or was responsible for without counting family cats I shared my life with when I was younger.
A year or so ago Belldandy started losing weight... she was originally around 11lbs or 12 when we had her weighed in 2008 and no issues with bloodwork.
Last year we started noticing some differences. Early spring and into summer she was very nasally; had issues with boogers out of her nose, issues breathing, sneezing and we were told that year was particularly rough on cats and allergies. I was still trying to treat the issues she was having with frequent hair balls, and towards the end of summer and fall we stepped up on the hair ball laxative to assist with that. Her blood work was so so, no major issues and anything that looked weird panned out ok with followups.
Come late October, early November we move the cats to a new appt. Sometime between right before the end of Oct and the beginning of Nov she loses her bottom left canine? (the big vampiry one!
) and I notice some redness. We take her to the doctors' and they want to run some bloodwork prior to any work to remove the rest of the tooth.
THIS EVENT IS THE CATALYST for the rest of my life...
The bloodwork comes back, not good, she's got elevated levels like she's fighting something and we can't do the surgery to remove the rest of the tooth. If there's any good news to this, the rest of the tooth that's the stump in her jaw is fine, she heals it well and we don't need to remove it.
However, beyond the bad blood work we have the issue that's she's now lost about 2 lbs since 2008. Jan 17th 2010 she's now down to 9.9lbs. She's losing about .3lbs every month or about.
We give her antibotics to get rid of the sinus issues, and that clears it up, (she's good on that mid Jan of this year). He gives her de-worming to resolve any potential issues with that in her stomach. We've had 2 stool samples run, no worms of any kind.
We've done ultrasound of her stomach, and of her lymph nodes. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
So, I'm EXTREMELY worried now. Crap, I had a long out cry a few nights ago worried I'm losing her... and I can't stop the weight loss.
The facts that I know are:
-We had her on antibotics and it cleared up her sinus issues... they ahve not returned yet and I've only seen a rare sneeze from her, that issue I believe is resolved.
-We had her on a week of steroids, then was off for 2 weeks. Still lost weight. Now we are going to do another full 10 days or so of steriods and see where we are at. We are dosing .5 2x per day that's compounded into a fish liquid because it's all we can get her to keep down... she'll throw up pills.
- Hair ball formula (laxative) I would assume is doing it's job. Since I've been more diligent about giving it I haven't seen ONE yet... and it's been about 6-7 months now?
- She's not eating less that we can tell, continues to eat food and drink water as normal, and the food she's eating is the D/D which vet says is fairly high in calories to begin with.
- She's started throwing up here in the last month (and right before we started steroids) with semi-digested food, and it is HIGHLY potent in smell... reminds me very much of super strong stomach acids combined with rotten egg smell. This has only recently developed, and I can't help but think it's a symptom. She won't throw up more than maybe 1 time every 2-3 days, but it's not regular and very random. Majority of it is digested food, so I don't think it's that she's eating too fast and making herself sick.
- Since last spring she's been a LOT MORE physically close to us. Both BH and I notice she wants to sleep under covers, or blankets, it's like she's cold or something. Always needs to be near us, or on us, or something of the two. You won't find her far from us, it's almost as if she's trying to tell me she's in pain, or cold, or that something's wrong and it pains me to even consider that as the way she's trying to communicate.
- She doesn't bathe herself as much as she used to. She doesn't fully clean herself head to toe like I've seen in the past, and she focuses mostly on just her face. She had problems in the past with loose stools and we'd have to trim her butt hair to help but that hasn't come back here recently at all.
- She's started pooping outside the box in other places in the house (hard to associate with her illness as it could be that BH's cat is harassing her and she doesn't feel comfortable using the litter box if he's stalking her)
- She's a 10 yr old cat (turned 10 in October) and I TRUELY want to spend more time with her and not sure I can mentally or emotionally consider her life about to be shortened
Doc wants to send us to a specialist who thinks that she might have cancer in her lymph nodes despite that they weren't overly showing something in the ultrasound done in late Nov/Dec. BH and I talked, I don't think we can consider chemo for her NOT because of $$, but I don't want to affect her current quality of life. I can't afford her to fear us holding her, taking her somewhere... I can't have her fearing us coming to her not sure if it's for affection or to go to the doctor and get a treatment. She is not a fan of the current vet visits, and I don't want her fear to become a permanent state of being if they were to become more frequent. If she continues to lose weight, and we can't stop it she'll potentially die from loss of weight and nutrients.
Have I written off Chemo for no good reason? Does it have a decent chance of working on a what was healthy 10yr old cat? Should I put her through it?
I don't know if my potential choices are right, or whether I should make them. I'd love some insight from other owners, cats or not on how you would make these hard decisions.
I'm not ready to lose her, but I don't want to prolong her life for the wrong reasons either.
Thanks,
Bunny the Cat Mommy
I am the proud mommy to 3 cats, two of which I've had my entire life, and one I adopted when I married my BH. I've also been the proud mommy to bunnies over the years, but they suffered health conditions that did not allow them to spend as much time with me, or me with them as I would have liked.
This is my very first baby, my girl, Belldandy. She was the first cat I ever owned or was responsible for without counting family cats I shared my life with when I was younger.
A year or so ago Belldandy started losing weight... she was originally around 11lbs or 12 when we had her weighed in 2008 and no issues with bloodwork.
Last year we started noticing some differences. Early spring and into summer she was very nasally; had issues with boogers out of her nose, issues breathing, sneezing and we were told that year was particularly rough on cats and allergies. I was still trying to treat the issues she was having with frequent hair balls, and towards the end of summer and fall we stepped up on the hair ball laxative to assist with that. Her blood work was so so, no major issues and anything that looked weird panned out ok with followups.
Come late October, early November we move the cats to a new appt. Sometime between right before the end of Oct and the beginning of Nov she loses her bottom left canine? (the big vampiry one!
) and I notice some redness. We take her to the doctors' and they want to run some bloodwork prior to any work to remove the rest of the tooth.THIS EVENT IS THE CATALYST for the rest of my life...
The bloodwork comes back, not good, she's got elevated levels like she's fighting something and we can't do the surgery to remove the rest of the tooth. If there's any good news to this, the rest of the tooth that's the stump in her jaw is fine, she heals it well and we don't need to remove it.
However, beyond the bad blood work we have the issue that's she's now lost about 2 lbs since 2008. Jan 17th 2010 she's now down to 9.9lbs. She's losing about .3lbs every month or about.
We give her antibotics to get rid of the sinus issues, and that clears it up, (she's good on that mid Jan of this year). He gives her de-worming to resolve any potential issues with that in her stomach. We've had 2 stool samples run, no worms of any kind.
We've done ultrasound of her stomach, and of her lymph nodes. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
So, I'm EXTREMELY worried now. Crap, I had a long out cry a few nights ago worried I'm losing her... and I can't stop the weight loss.
The facts that I know are:
-We had her on antibotics and it cleared up her sinus issues... they ahve not returned yet and I've only seen a rare sneeze from her, that issue I believe is resolved.
-We had her on a week of steroids, then was off for 2 weeks. Still lost weight. Now we are going to do another full 10 days or so of steriods and see where we are at. We are dosing .5 2x per day that's compounded into a fish liquid because it's all we can get her to keep down... she'll throw up pills.
- Hair ball formula (laxative) I would assume is doing it's job. Since I've been more diligent about giving it I haven't seen ONE yet... and it's been about 6-7 months now?
- She's not eating less that we can tell, continues to eat food and drink water as normal, and the food she's eating is the D/D which vet says is fairly high in calories to begin with.
- She's started throwing up here in the last month (and right before we started steroids) with semi-digested food, and it is HIGHLY potent in smell... reminds me very much of super strong stomach acids combined with rotten egg smell. This has only recently developed, and I can't help but think it's a symptom. She won't throw up more than maybe 1 time every 2-3 days, but it's not regular and very random. Majority of it is digested food, so I don't think it's that she's eating too fast and making herself sick.
- Since last spring she's been a LOT MORE physically close to us. Both BH and I notice she wants to sleep under covers, or blankets, it's like she's cold or something. Always needs to be near us, or on us, or something of the two. You won't find her far from us, it's almost as if she's trying to tell me she's in pain, or cold, or that something's wrong and it pains me to even consider that as the way she's trying to communicate.
- She doesn't bathe herself as much as she used to. She doesn't fully clean herself head to toe like I've seen in the past, and she focuses mostly on just her face. She had problems in the past with loose stools and we'd have to trim her butt hair to help but that hasn't come back here recently at all.
- She's started pooping outside the box in other places in the house (hard to associate with her illness as it could be that BH's cat is harassing her and she doesn't feel comfortable using the litter box if he's stalking her)
- She's a 10 yr old cat (turned 10 in October) and I TRUELY want to spend more time with her and not sure I can mentally or emotionally consider her life about to be shortened
Doc wants to send us to a specialist who thinks that she might have cancer in her lymph nodes despite that they weren't overly showing something in the ultrasound done in late Nov/Dec. BH and I talked, I don't think we can consider chemo for her NOT because of $$, but I don't want to affect her current quality of life. I can't afford her to fear us holding her, taking her somewhere... I can't have her fearing us coming to her not sure if it's for affection or to go to the doctor and get a treatment. She is not a fan of the current vet visits, and I don't want her fear to become a permanent state of being if they were to become more frequent. If she continues to lose weight, and we can't stop it she'll potentially die from loss of weight and nutrients.
Have I written off Chemo for no good reason? Does it have a decent chance of working on a what was healthy 10yr old cat? Should I put her through it?
I don't know if my potential choices are right, or whether I should make them. I'd love some insight from other owners, cats or not on how you would make these hard decisions.
I'm not ready to lose her, but I don't want to prolong her life for the wrong reasons either.
Thanks,
Bunny the Cat Mommy
