If you have any experience with a cat with inflammatory bowel disease or lymphoma, I would greatly appreciate your input:
I have had my little best friend Noodles since he was 9 weeks old and now he's almost 11 years old. A few weeks ago he started vomiting and was barely eating. After multiple appointments, bloodwork, an ultrasound, and trials of different diets and medications, the conconclusion was that he most likely had inflammatory bowel disease rather than cancer. He has inflammation of his liver, intestines, and pancreas. Therefore he continued to stay on a venison and pea diet and he was started on Prednisolone, Cerenia, Mirtazapine, a probiotic, and B12 injections. He started doing much better, the vomiting stopped and he started eating a lot more. However last week the inflammation had spread to his eyes so an opthalmologist put him on two types of eye drops (but the Tropicamide drops were discontinued since it was causing him to salivate and stop eating). They won't know yet if he'll go blind or not, but now the opinion of all the doctors is that it could be cancer since the inflammation has spread. I know there's no test that can determine if it's IBD or cancer and that only an endoscopy or biopsy can attempt to diagnose them. Therefore our only options we really have are: 1) Have him go through a surgical biopsy which is not only risky since it's a surgery, but to get good results it would require him to get off of the Prednisolone that's currently stopping his chronic vomiting 2) Start him on Chlorambucil that could help him if he has small cell lymphoma, but wouldn't help him if he has large cell lymphoma and could of course have very bad side effects.
The decision is very difficult, both have risks. I'm going to look into a holistic vet as well to see what options they might have. I was just wondering if anyone had any experience and could share their opinion because it is all so difficult for my husband and I to figure out what is best. Thank you for your help.
I have had my little best friend Noodles since he was 9 weeks old and now he's almost 11 years old. A few weeks ago he started vomiting and was barely eating. After multiple appointments, bloodwork, an ultrasound, and trials of different diets and medications, the conconclusion was that he most likely had inflammatory bowel disease rather than cancer. He has inflammation of his liver, intestines, and pancreas. Therefore he continued to stay on a venison and pea diet and he was started on Prednisolone, Cerenia, Mirtazapine, a probiotic, and B12 injections. He started doing much better, the vomiting stopped and he started eating a lot more. However last week the inflammation had spread to his eyes so an opthalmologist put him on two types of eye drops (but the Tropicamide drops were discontinued since it was causing him to salivate and stop eating). They won't know yet if he'll go blind or not, but now the opinion of all the doctors is that it could be cancer since the inflammation has spread. I know there's no test that can determine if it's IBD or cancer and that only an endoscopy or biopsy can attempt to diagnose them. Therefore our only options we really have are: 1) Have him go through a surgical biopsy which is not only risky since it's a surgery, but to get good results it would require him to get off of the Prednisolone that's currently stopping his chronic vomiting 2) Start him on Chlorambucil that could help him if he has small cell lymphoma, but wouldn't help him if he has large cell lymphoma and could of course have very bad side effects.
The decision is very difficult, both have risks. I'm going to look into a holistic vet as well to see what options they might have. I was just wondering if anyone had any experience and could share their opinion because it is all so difficult for my husband and I to figure out what is best. Thank you for your help.