Kitty with Osteosarcoma

Hi All,

I just wanted to introduce myself and see if anyone else out there has or had a kitty who dealt with Osteosarcoma before?  My 8-year-old Kitty Jill had her right hind leg amputated on 12/12/12 and is halfway through chemo right now.  She goes for her third chemo treatment tomorrow and has her first lung xray since before her surgery (which was clear at the time) and I'm pretty freaked out, because shes coughed a few times in the past two days.  I'm just trying not to think about it and hoping for good news!  She is doing so so so well so far!  If you would like to read more about her, she has a blog:

http://jillsjourney.tripawds.com/

Anyway, I would really appreciate it if anyone else has any experiences they could share with me.  Thank you.

Erica & Kitty Jill

I do not have any personal experience with this, but am just sending some vibes that the lung xrays are still clearl and that the chemo does the trick .  Jill should do just fine on 3 legs.  There are several cats on this site with only 3 legs, and they barely notice

I know you posted quite a while ago, but I was researching Osteosarcoma and came across this. I have had an experience with Ostersarcoma, but not the same as yours.

I recently lost my 17 year old cat to the disease. A few years ago, I noticed a small knot on his hip, and assumed it was just a swollen spot from a fall or similar injury. A few weeks later (I had left him at my parents house when I moved out because I couldn't take him with me) I noticed the bump was a bit larger. He tolerated me touching it, but pulled away if i applied any real pressure. I mentioned it to my parents, and they kind of gave me a brush-off about it. At this point it was about the size of a golf ball. Several weeks later, I saw him again, and it had grown to the size of a tennis ball. I suggested to my mother that maybe it was time for this mostly-outdoor-cat to retire to the laundry room to rest, but my cat wasn't interested and made a break for it at the first opportunity. The next time I saw him, it was almost the size of an orange, and I insisted that we bring him to see the vet immediately. We took him in, they did an x-ray and told us that it was definitely a growth inside the bone, and that our only two options were to have his leg amputated at the hip, which at 15 years old would be very traumatic, and that he would probably not fully recover physically or mentally, and they gave him 6 months to live post-op, OR to let the mass grow naturally, try to keep him inside to reduce strain on the hip, and when he started declining, losing ability to walk and jump, losing interest in his food, then to bring him in and at least have him reevaluated, and probably put down. She then told us "We can't say for certain that it's a malignant tumor without further testing. It's $300 for the biopsy, but either way the results come back, your options are the same." 

We opted to not make his last months more traumatic than they already were, and we took him home. In the months that passed, Tikki spent more time inside, and ironically, more time underfoot, running between your feet, tripping you. He eventually lost all control and at least most of the feeling in that leg, and the leg stuck out away from his body because the mass destroyed his joint. But he kept on, running, jumping, eating, acting as if nothing were any different about him. The only change we noticed in him was that he became more social, he wanted to be around you all the time, he wanted to be in the house all the time. After almost two years, as I left the house early in the morning for work, I greeted him lying in the back hall, and in the back of my mind thought it funny that he didn't immediately run into the house as he had been doing. He just looked up at me, and then went back to napping on his rug. A few hours later, when my father went out to the laundry room, he found Tikki lying on the floor, where he curled up, and passed away, presumably in his sleep. 

I am very glad that I gave him the chance to stay with us for two years, instead of cutting his time short and making his life more of a challenge. I'm glad he got to spend his last days in a place where he loved, with the family he knew, instead of in treatment rooms, and vet offices, for an operation that probably would have killed him before the Osteosarcoma did.

  I respect your decision to have your cat treated and I hope everything is well for her, but having the surgery done wasn't the right choice for us. 

Thank you for sharing your story, that's amazing that he survived for two years!  What a fighter!  Jill is now almost one year post amputation, 7 months post chemo treatments and doing wonderfully.  She has her one year check up in a few weeks and hopefully there will be no sign of any spread to her lungs!!