As I write this, I just returned from my first veterinary oncologist visit with my boy, DC. It seemed like he was having skin issues, thinning fur, licking a lot; and then we noticed a sore on his tummy that couldn’t be easily explained. So, we spent a lot of time over the last month at the vet. First, a blood panel; slightly elevated BUN, but otherwise nothing to worry about. Urinalysis was good. But he was losing weight visit to visit, so our vet suggested an abdominal ultrasound; basically rule out any issues with IBS, internal bleeding, kidneys, liver, etc. All came back clear. Xrays were done as well, those were also clear. Finally, she took a couple of biopsies of his skin; near the sore on his stomach and another spot as well. A week later, we had a tentative diagnosis — round cell cancer. Further testing of the samples revealed that the cancer was lymphoma.
Now, my boy is special. He can’t just have run of the mill feline lymphoma, oh no. He’s got non-epitheliotropic cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, which is between .2%-3% [warning: this link contains photos of cats with tumors] of all lymphomas in cats. It’s rare enough that the specialist I saw, a practicing oncologist of over 10 years, has never had a feline case of this before. She has seen it a few times, in dogs, but DC is her first feline patient with this type of cancer. Yay?
The good news is, this type of lymphoma is supposed to be less aggressive. The bad news is, we really have no idea what the prognosis is, or what to expect from treatment. We’re going with a standard chemo treatment; chemotherapy once a week for 8 weeks, then once every other week for 8 more treatments. Thankfully, chemo is not as rough on cats as it is humans. As the vet put it, cats don’t get sick when you tank their white blood cell counts. So mostly they don’t have the same side effects that humans do. We do have to keep an eye out for diabetes — apparently one of the side effects of the Prednisone is that it can cause diabetes in cats. And we’re not allowed to overfeed DC because of this; the vet doesn’t want him gaining any weight (he’s just under 12 lbs now).
All in all, the vet said that if DC responds to the chemo, we could have a couple more years. If he doesn’t, well… average is about 6 months after diagnosis. So we’re going to hope we beat the odds. Fingers crossed.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
As always, this is an open thread and nothing is off topic. What do you want to kibitz about tonight?