Hi everyone! I'm new to this site and I'm a proud kitty mama to two beautiful cats, but unfortunately, the circumstance that brought me to this site is not a good one.
Be prepared to read, this is a little long (sorry!) I’ll start off with a quick history first. My cat Buddy originally came from my grandmother. She got him from an agency that provides cat companions to senior citizens. I know that he had another family before her, but we were never able to find out how long he was there for. My grandmother had him for two years and I have had him for five years, so age wise we guess he is somewhere between 8-10 years old, but he could be older. Whenever my family visited her we always saw that there was a lot of cat vomit, mainly under the bed where she couldn’t reach to clean. He obviously has a history of GI issues. When my grandmother had to move into assisted living she didn't want Buddy to go back to the agency. My one year old kitty Mila needed a friend and I love cats so in 2009 I offered to take him in. We've been a happy little family ever since.
In the beginning of 2012 Buddy started acting weird. He was running around a lot, being very vocal and just overly hyper. A few days later he started throwing up large amounts of food and when we realized he wasn't keeping any food down and had lost weight we took him to the vet. Ultimately the vet determined that he had Hyperthyroid and was put on medication. A few months later the issue came up again and they suspected he also had Inflammatory Bowel Disease and was put on a low dosage of Prednisolone (which he was weaned off of spring of this year). Over the past two years we've had to bring him in 4-5 times for the same issues; vomiting and diarrhea. Each time his dosage appeared to be off and his intestines were inflamed, so they'd adjust the dosage, put him on antibiotics for a week and he'd be fine. The issue came up again last month. They said his thyroid levels were higher than they were when he was first diagnosed. They did the usual and we were fine. Prior to this he was eating Royal Canin Pea & Rabbit wet and only small amounts of dry, but after last month I opted for the wet food only to avoid possible intestinal issues. Almost exactly one month later he started having diarrhea, lost weight quickly (nearly half a pound over a course of 3 days) and lost his appetite for the pea & rabbit food. I tried switching him to another rabbit formula, which he ate just fine, but the diarrhea continued. I took him to the vet and they suggested that I go see an internal medicine vet for an abdominal ultrasound.
This vet stated that "there is mild-moderate diffuse thickening throughout the jejunum, which is predominantly noted in the deeper (muscularis) layer, which unfortunately tends to be correlating with lymphoma more so than inflammatory bowel disease. Because wall architecture is largely retained (with the exception of poor definition at the distal ileum), low grade lymphoma may be present.” She also noted that his hyperthyroid levels are currently within normal range and she thinks that the reason we’ve had to change his dosage so many times is because his inflamed intestines were not allowing the medication to properly absorb into his system.
The vet decided to put him on 1mL of Prednisolone twice daily for 10 days, then once daily for an indefinite period of time. She also wants me to give him B12 injections weekly (then eventually taper to once/month) and 1/4 tab of Pepcid AC to help with stomach upset. She said that in two weeks I can come back to reevaluate his health and if he is feeling better she wants to start him on the chemotherapy drug Leukeran.
Once she said the words “lymphoma” I kind of blanked out for the rest. I was expecting some kind of severe IBD diagnosis, never once did I ever think it could be cancer. I was in shock. When she was talking to me all I could do was nod my head yes or no because if I opened my mouth I knew I would break down. She said that she expects that it is lymphoma, but there is no way to know for sure without doing an endoscopy or exploratory surgery, but an endoscopy would not be able to get to where they need to pull the samples from.
I’ve obviously been in denial and found another vet to take him to for a second opinion a few days later. I had been looking into another clinic recently because I was thinking about getting the I-131 Radioiodine treatment for his hyperthyroid. This clinic sees ONLY cats and I had been researching them for quite some time so I felt this would be a good place to try. This vet got all of the information from my previous vets and agreed that it could be lymphoma. But the thing is that over a course of 5 days between my last visit and this one he had gained nearly all of his weight back and has more formed stools. I had switched him to the Natural Instinct limited ingredient turkey diet and he loved it. The vet seemed very surprised. She said even though the pred/b12 can increase appetite, weight gain this fast is uncommon. I took that as maybe possibly he doesn’t have lymphoma, maybe it’s just a bad flare up of IBD. Right now he’s acting like his normal self too (for the last week he’s spent a lot of time sleeping and uninterested). Now he’s awake a lot more, he sleeps in my bed with me, he stalks birds in the windows, completely normal. But she said based on the information she has from the other vets she’d want to pursue the same course of action with the Leukeran, but said that it would be more ideal to have a full thickness biopsy first. She said that without surgery there is no way to definitely diagnosis the problem. She said the surgery involves taking biopsies from all organs, not just the intestines, to find out how extensive the problem is and that if it is cancer (or something else) they may be able to come up with a more targeted treatment plan.
This is going to be expensive either way so I’m not factoring the cost in with the decision making process. My grandmother just passed 8 months ago and he is all I have left of her so I will do whatever it takes. I am so devastated and lost and I have no idea what decision is the best one for him. I obviously don’t want him to suffer, I want him to live as long as possible while still having a good quality of life. If he doesn’t have small cell lymphoma and I choose to do the chemo without the biopsy then couldn’t it do more harm than good? Especially if we treat it thinking it’s lymphoma and it’s something else that needs to be treated differently and by the time we figure it out it will be too late to treat? This vet didn’t rule out the possibility of large cell lymphoma either, which would definitely need surgery.
Can anyone who has gone through this or know someone who has gone through this share their story with me? Maybe if you could go back and go through it over again you’d make a different choice? Maybe there’s an option that hasn’t been offered to met yet? I’m obviously going to continue doing my own research, but this is all new territory for me so I don’t know where to start. I’ll be following up with my vet in a week (I'm sticking with the one that only sees cats) and she wants me to try and decide by then what route I want to take.
If you’ve made it this far thank you so much for taking the time to read my story. I haven’t slept much the last few days and it’s currently 2am so I hope that I have conveyed my situation clearly. I greatly appreciate any advice you can offer.
Emily
Mila is on the left, Buddy is on the right <3
Be prepared to read, this is a little long (sorry!) I’ll start off with a quick history first. My cat Buddy originally came from my grandmother. She got him from an agency that provides cat companions to senior citizens. I know that he had another family before her, but we were never able to find out how long he was there for. My grandmother had him for two years and I have had him for five years, so age wise we guess he is somewhere between 8-10 years old, but he could be older. Whenever my family visited her we always saw that there was a lot of cat vomit, mainly under the bed where she couldn’t reach to clean. He obviously has a history of GI issues. When my grandmother had to move into assisted living she didn't want Buddy to go back to the agency. My one year old kitty Mila needed a friend and I love cats so in 2009 I offered to take him in. We've been a happy little family ever since.
In the beginning of 2012 Buddy started acting weird. He was running around a lot, being very vocal and just overly hyper. A few days later he started throwing up large amounts of food and when we realized he wasn't keeping any food down and had lost weight we took him to the vet. Ultimately the vet determined that he had Hyperthyroid and was put on medication. A few months later the issue came up again and they suspected he also had Inflammatory Bowel Disease and was put on a low dosage of Prednisolone (which he was weaned off of spring of this year). Over the past two years we've had to bring him in 4-5 times for the same issues; vomiting and diarrhea. Each time his dosage appeared to be off and his intestines were inflamed, so they'd adjust the dosage, put him on antibiotics for a week and he'd be fine. The issue came up again last month. They said his thyroid levels were higher than they were when he was first diagnosed. They did the usual and we were fine. Prior to this he was eating Royal Canin Pea & Rabbit wet and only small amounts of dry, but after last month I opted for the wet food only to avoid possible intestinal issues. Almost exactly one month later he started having diarrhea, lost weight quickly (nearly half a pound over a course of 3 days) and lost his appetite for the pea & rabbit food. I tried switching him to another rabbit formula, which he ate just fine, but the diarrhea continued. I took him to the vet and they suggested that I go see an internal medicine vet for an abdominal ultrasound.
This vet stated that "there is mild-moderate diffuse thickening throughout the jejunum, which is predominantly noted in the deeper (muscularis) layer, which unfortunately tends to be correlating with lymphoma more so than inflammatory bowel disease. Because wall architecture is largely retained (with the exception of poor definition at the distal ileum), low grade lymphoma may be present.” She also noted that his hyperthyroid levels are currently within normal range and she thinks that the reason we’ve had to change his dosage so many times is because his inflamed intestines were not allowing the medication to properly absorb into his system.
The vet decided to put him on 1mL of Prednisolone twice daily for 10 days, then once daily for an indefinite period of time. She also wants me to give him B12 injections weekly (then eventually taper to once/month) and 1/4 tab of Pepcid AC to help with stomach upset. She said that in two weeks I can come back to reevaluate his health and if he is feeling better she wants to start him on the chemotherapy drug Leukeran.
Once she said the words “lymphoma” I kind of blanked out for the rest. I was expecting some kind of severe IBD diagnosis, never once did I ever think it could be cancer. I was in shock. When she was talking to me all I could do was nod my head yes or no because if I opened my mouth I knew I would break down. She said that she expects that it is lymphoma, but there is no way to know for sure without doing an endoscopy or exploratory surgery, but an endoscopy would not be able to get to where they need to pull the samples from.
I’ve obviously been in denial and found another vet to take him to for a second opinion a few days later. I had been looking into another clinic recently because I was thinking about getting the I-131 Radioiodine treatment for his hyperthyroid. This clinic sees ONLY cats and I had been researching them for quite some time so I felt this would be a good place to try. This vet got all of the information from my previous vets and agreed that it could be lymphoma. But the thing is that over a course of 5 days between my last visit and this one he had gained nearly all of his weight back and has more formed stools. I had switched him to the Natural Instinct limited ingredient turkey diet and he loved it. The vet seemed very surprised. She said even though the pred/b12 can increase appetite, weight gain this fast is uncommon. I took that as maybe possibly he doesn’t have lymphoma, maybe it’s just a bad flare up of IBD. Right now he’s acting like his normal self too (for the last week he’s spent a lot of time sleeping and uninterested). Now he’s awake a lot more, he sleeps in my bed with me, he stalks birds in the windows, completely normal. But she said based on the information she has from the other vets she’d want to pursue the same course of action with the Leukeran, but said that it would be more ideal to have a full thickness biopsy first. She said that without surgery there is no way to definitely diagnosis the problem. She said the surgery involves taking biopsies from all organs, not just the intestines, to find out how extensive the problem is and that if it is cancer (or something else) they may be able to come up with a more targeted treatment plan.
This is going to be expensive either way so I’m not factoring the cost in with the decision making process. My grandmother just passed 8 months ago and he is all I have left of her so I will do whatever it takes. I am so devastated and lost and I have no idea what decision is the best one for him. I obviously don’t want him to suffer, I want him to live as long as possible while still having a good quality of life. If he doesn’t have small cell lymphoma and I choose to do the chemo without the biopsy then couldn’t it do more harm than good? Especially if we treat it thinking it’s lymphoma and it’s something else that needs to be treated differently and by the time we figure it out it will be too late to treat? This vet didn’t rule out the possibility of large cell lymphoma either, which would definitely need surgery.
Can anyone who has gone through this or know someone who has gone through this share their story with me? Maybe if you could go back and go through it over again you’d make a different choice? Maybe there’s an option that hasn’t been offered to met yet? I’m obviously going to continue doing my own research, but this is all new territory for me so I don’t know where to start. I’ll be following up with my vet in a week (I'm sticking with the one that only sees cats) and she wants me to try and decide by then what route I want to take.
If you’ve made it this far thank you so much for taking the time to read my story. I haven’t slept much the last few days and it’s currently 2am so I hope that I have conveyed my situation clearly. I greatly appreciate any advice you can offer.
Emily
Mila is on the left, Buddy is on the right <3