"Benign" ear tumors

sekhmet87

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Hey all-

I am new here, I stumbled across this site in my search for info on ceruminous gland adenoma and the surgery's to help it. Our little fluff ball Mouse is currently dealing with these tumors and all manner of frustrating side effects to the treatments and I was wondering if anyone has any advice.

Back in December 2013 we noticed Mouse scratching her right ear and some blood crusted in it. I thought at first she had just scratched herself and opened the scab, as I have seen happen before. When it didn't clear up we took her for her annual visit and they said she had an infection.

Cue 6 weeks of Zeniquin and one week of Mometamax.

It cleared up and within a week was back. We brought her to a specialist who says it looks like she has ceruminous gland adenoma, but can't tell how bad it is because of the infection. We start the Zeniquin and Mometamax again, with instructions for her to wear the cone until it clears up again.

The cone was not a good idea.

She somehow managed to wedge her head between the couch and the wall and scratch her ear with the cone. This nicked one of the tumors which bled like crazy. Basically she was now sitting in a cone of blood. When we finally got her out from behind the couch (which entailed moving the couch to wrangle her out) we cleaned her up and put her in the bedroom with the door closed so she couldn't do that again. Her ear kept on bleeding for days, meaning we had to clean it every day. As long as she had the cone on she refused to eat, drink or use the litter box, she would only lay sadly in the corner.

After a few days of trying to get her to eat and drink with any trick we could think of we took her in to our primary vet who did subcutaneous fluids and told us we could take the cone off to see if she'd eat if we watched her. We did this for two days but, as we both work and she didn't necessarily want to eat in the hours we were home this did not work very well. We took her back to the vet on the third day for another round of sub-q fluids, an injection of Regalan and some Hills Science Diet A/D and instructions to ditch the cone.

After this she seemed all better for about 2 days. We are now at a week and four days from that last visit and the excitement of the A/D seems to have worn off. Even with the cone off and her ear significantly clearer shes still not as interested in food as she normally would be. She's using the litter box for urine pretty normally but only seems to be pooping every other or every third day, and not very much.

Now we need to get her healthy before she goes for surgery some time in the next few weeks because its looking unlikely that they will be able to do the CO2 laser, they will have to do surgical ablation instead which will be traumatic for her 10 year old self and put her back in the cone, which as we have seen is disastrous.

I am concerned about her not wanting to eat now, I am concerned about how terrible this surgery is going to be and im concerned about getting her to eat after the surgery if she will be in the cone.

Does anyone have any advice for any part of this?

 

random gemini

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Worst case scenario, you could try getting some canned chicken into her, if you are concerned about her eating. If that fails, try canned tuna, or at least getting her to drink the water from the can. 

I can't help you with the rest. Hopefully someone else here will have some more input for you.
 
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sekhmet87

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Thanks for the response 
. She likes the water from the tuna but has no interest in the actual tuna meat itself. I threw out several very dry cans of tuna already haha. Do you know if there is any caloric value to the tuna water? If there is I'll keep giving her that.
 

random gemini

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There is some, I'm sure. Have you tried the canned chicken too? It sounds gross, but it's actually not gross at all and if she won't eat the tuna, the chicken might stimulate her appetite.
 
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sekhmet87

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Thanks I'll try that. She's at the vets for the weekend now:-(
 
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