Dan, I went back and read your thread again and noted that you already had an ultrasound, I am sorry, I was reading your more recent threads and discussion of ultrasounds. I don't really think you will need very many overall. In a year's time, Toby had four but two were before we even began treatment. Your doctor is wise in saying just go to surgery and don't try to do the aspirate. Most vets feel that nothing really subsitutes for going in there and seeing the tissue themselves, and an aspirate may not actually find the lymphocytes that will diagnose your boy.
if I had to do it over again, I would have gone from the x-ray directly to surgery and saved myself the money. Also Toby may not have actually needed his last ultrasound, but we wanted to be sure that his cancer was taking over.
So at this point you should be able to set your boy up for surgery to go in and remove the mass and get a pathology report all at the same time. We did a consult with another vet before sending Toby in for surgery. Like you and your boy, our Toby was losing weight and had already had two ultrasounds and we were very hesitant to move forward without knowing really anything. It seemed very strange to us and hard on our boy. If you trust your existing vet, you might want to call them back up and talk to them about the outcomes if you simply do the surgery. And I have to tell you, what made us go ahead and allow the vet to go in there, was the knowledge that our boy had a mass and that nobody had actually gotten to where they diagnosed him with cancer. All we could think was, here is this mass and we can't just leave him there not knowing if we could have just taken it out and cured him.
No matter what, get your vet to prescribe the sucralfate for his tummy, it will make him feel better and if he has bleeding ulcers it can fix the anemia. My Toby was never anemic during his entire illness. I gave my boy both the sucralfate and 1/2 pepsid along with the prednisolone and that helps a lot, especially given that the prednisolone is really hard on their stomachs.
There is another cat on here, Muffin, whose parents decided to just do the surgery. Muffin had a great outcome and a long remission. You can check that thread too!
if I had to do it over again, I would have gone from the x-ray directly to surgery and saved myself the money. Also Toby may not have actually needed his last ultrasound, but we wanted to be sure that his cancer was taking over.
So at this point you should be able to set your boy up for surgery to go in and remove the mass and get a pathology report all at the same time. We did a consult with another vet before sending Toby in for surgery. Like you and your boy, our Toby was losing weight and had already had two ultrasounds and we were very hesitant to move forward without knowing really anything. It seemed very strange to us and hard on our boy. If you trust your existing vet, you might want to call them back up and talk to them about the outcomes if you simply do the surgery. And I have to tell you, what made us go ahead and allow the vet to go in there, was the knowledge that our boy had a mass and that nobody had actually gotten to where they diagnosed him with cancer. All we could think was, here is this mass and we can't just leave him there not knowing if we could have just taken it out and cured him.
No matter what, get your vet to prescribe the sucralfate for his tummy, it will make him feel better and if he has bleeding ulcers it can fix the anemia. My Toby was never anemic during his entire illness. I gave my boy both the sucralfate and 1/2 pepsid along with the prednisolone and that helps a lot, especially given that the prednisolone is really hard on their stomachs.
There is another cat on here, Muffin, whose parents decided to just do the surgery. Muffin had a great outcome and a long remission. You can check that thread too!
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