Liver disease (possibly cancer). Any relief?

gabes1919 said:

 
Stumbled across this site tonight and was wondering if anyone had any knowledge of how we could help make our cat more comfortable and possibly prolong his life a little. He's a persian who is only 5 years old but the both the vet and the specialist we've seen tell us that he has liver disease caused most likely by cancer. We came to the cancer conclusion because over the last 8 months or so, he's been on a round of 4 medications: denamarin, clavamox, ursodiel, and metronidazole. His values had been yo-yoing for a bit from 250, 130, 500, 250, 310, and now over 700. He also hasn't been eating consistently and is losing weight, we basically force feed him wet food half the time and he barely shows interest in dry food. He maybe sleeps more than he used to but it's hard to tell if that's a symptom of anything because he's always been an introverted cat anyway. He still is active when we play with him, wants attention, moves around the house, all the normal stuff. We wouldn't have even known he was sick if they hadn't done routine blood work on him prior to him getting his teeth cleaned. Despite that, it seems pretty clear that he's ill and may not be with us long if his values are any indication.

My question is if anyone has gone through this before and what, if anything, you did that seemed to help prolong the cat's life or at least seemed to make it more comfortable?  I've read that thistle milk will help promote some liver health and that we should only be feeding him really high quality and simple food to give his liver as little work as possible but otherwise I don't know what else there is to even try. I was too shell shocked to really ask the doctor when he called with the numbers, I knew it could be bad but I didn't think his results would be that bad. We also give him a milk supplement for older cats at least twice a day since he's been eating so irregularly and needs the nutrients. Any help or advice anyone has would be a huge comfort

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StephenQ said:

 
Denamarin is probably better than milk thistle but for cats that are hard to pill, milk thistle is a tasteless powder than can be mixed in food.  If he isn't eating due to nausea I would discuss using cerenia, a fairly amazing anti nausea medicine.

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gabes1919 said:

 
Thanks for the responses. We're not sure if his eating is nausea related. His vomiting has been getting more frequent but it's rarely just following a meal. Usually fluid that is clear or just a little milky looking. He is a very difficult pill taker, do you have any experience with cerenia being problematic to give? I will try that though. From the research I've been doing, it seems like the not eating is part of an increasingly vicious cycle. The less he eats, the more fat he uses and weight he loses and thus his liver gets worse and he feels less like eating. I know I'm grasping at straws here and that cancer is the most likely cause but I am trying to hope that maybe fixing his eating could help him get back on track and that maybe that's what is causing his degeneration
 

As for the denamarin, he was on it for a month early on, got better and went off it. When he got worse again, we tried something else, then went back to denamarin plus the other things last month and it hasn't helped at all. We still have it and the ability to give it to him, just worried about the stress level it creates among all his other problems because he is resistant to take pills. I was not aware that it contained milk thistle as well. Good to know.

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StephenQ said:

 
I don't know how a cat lives 8 months with liver cancer.....if his liver is inflamed he might respond to steroids, we're probably about to start that with one of our cats due to an inflammed liver, we're going to do injectable which is very easy to give, much easier than a pill with a reluctant cat.  Cerenia in pill form is fairly small, but always depends on the cat.  If he's vomiting a lot, that sounds like nausea.  Besides cerenia, pepcid ac in a cat dosage can help as well.

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gabes1919 said:

 
Still waiting to hear back from the doctor again about if there is some other medication we should start on for the liver but an injectable is an option. We looked up both Cerenia and pepcid. Both being pills, we would need to grind them up and mix them with something he likes but because he's finicky with food to begin with, we were afraid that he would stop drinking the milk supplement if we miced it with something medicinal that tasted bad. He refused wet food options in the past because we had used them to mix in meds. We ended up getting some digestive droplets for upset stomach (Homeopet digestive upsets). We don't know if it's the drops, the cortisone or the B12 but he has been famished and eating ravenously since last night. Hopefully the increased appetite is a sign of something positive to come.

Your comment about how a cat lives 8 months with liver cancer though, I don't have a good answer for that. They weren't sure what it was originally and he's only gotten worse, in terms of eating and liver levels, in the last 3 months but I feel like you have a point. Gives us a little hope that maybe our cat has a perfect storm of problems that looks like cancer but isn't.

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gabes1919 said:

 
Still waiting to hear back from the doctor again about if there is some other medication we should start on for the liver but an injectable is an option. We looked up both Cerenia and pepcid. Both being pills, we would need to grind them up and mix them with something he likes but because he's finicky with food to begin with, we were afraid that he would stop drinking the milk supplement if we miced it with something medicinal that tasted bad. He refused wet food options in the past because we had used them to mix in meds. We ended up getting some digestive droplets for upset stomach (Homeopet digestive upsets). We don't know if it's the drops, the cortisone or the B12 but he has been famished and eating ravenously since last night. Hopefully the increased appetite is a sign of something positive to come.

Your comment about how a cat lives 8 months with liver cancer though, I don't have a good answer for that. They weren't sure what it was originally and he's only gotten worse, in terms of eating and liver levels, in the last 3 months but I feel like you have a point. Gives us a little hope that maybe our cat has a perfect storm of problems that looks like cancer but isn't.

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