Grizzley is again at the vet. I stayed up until five this morning trying to decide if it’s time. I don’t want him to suffer needlessly but I don’t want to put him down if he’s still fighting and hasn’t given up.
As much as I watched him, I couldn’t tell. He kept going to his food bowls, a little too often, tried to eat, but couldn’t eat more than a bite. Yesterday he probably ate about a quarter of the amount he normally eats. He couldn’t stay lying in one position for more than 10 minutes at a time. He couldn’t make himself comfortable. He made sounds that resembles moaning or groaning sounds when he changed his position. He was alert. He started purring as soon as my hand touched him. He had hard time breathing. He was wobbly. I didn’t know what to do.
My friend, who I made the arrangement with, to drive me to the vet when I have to put Grizzley to sleep, called around 6:45 in the morning to see if he should come to drive me to the vet or he should go to work. I still didn’t know. We decided he should go to work, and see later and he’d leave work early if it had to be done today.
After I took the dogs out, however, Grizzley was following me around in the kitchen, weak as he was and breathing laboriously, rubbing against my ankle and meowing and purring. He still had life in his eyes and he hasn’t given up yet. So I got ready for work, put him in the carrier, drove to the vet and dropped him off so that they could make him more comfortable and take the fluid out of his lungs again. And I’ll have another sleepless night with Grizzley.
Grizzley stayed at the hospital Wednesday night. It turns out that he does have lymphoma and now it has advanced to his chest cavity. The vet took the fluid out of his lungs a few times so he could breathe better and he finally ate something yesterday after starving himself for 2 days. The vet says that once at this stage, the disease advances rapidly and Grizzley has a couple of months at the most unless he decides to surprise us by responding really well to the medications, in which case I might have a few more months with him.
I took him home last night and so far, he has eaten only 2 oz of canned food while normally he should have finished 9 oz. But it might just be that the dosage of prednisone that we quadrupled just 2 days ago hasn’t taken considerable effect yet. If he doesn’t eat substantial amount by tomorrow morning, I have to take him back to the vet tomorrow.
Please please please keep your fingers crossed, say a prayer and send him good vibes so that he at least sees his 15th birthday, 28th of June, and also that his last days are not too painful to him and that I recognize the time to let him go when the time comes.
The result of ultrasound added more concerns about intestinal lymphoma, but it could still be the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The only way to know for sure is to do a biopsy. Because we are treating him as having the IBD, he’s on prednisone. But according to the vet, prednisone is also used for treating lymphoma as well. The ultrasound also shows an early signs of chronic renal failure, but the vet assured me it’s common for any 14 year old cat.
I don’t know what to think yet. I have to decide on what I should do IF it really is cancer before doing the biopsy since if I don’t opt for the chemo, there is no point in doing the biopsy at all, and it’s about $1,200. I’d be putting about $2,000 on my credit card for Grizzley’s treatment up to today, so if I don’t have to, I definitely don’t want to have the biopsy done.
It seems there are two different opinions on having a cat (or dog) subject to chemo therapy. One is that chemo on cats is vastly different from that on people; it’s not painful and cats don’t go through the same hardship as people on chemo since its goal is remission, not cure. The other opinion is that how do we know if it’s not painful and not hard on them, we all know they tend to hide pain (I know full well Griz hide it very well), and people with no signs of cancer after going through a chemo are said to be in remission, not cured.
I haven’t talked to “my” vet yet, I only talked to the other vet. So I still want to talk to her about it. If I decide to go ahead with biopsy, she would be the one performing the procedure.
I’ll be picking him up today anyway, and I have some time to think about it and do some research on it. Please comment with your thoughts/opinions/experiences about it. I’d really appreciate it.
Serious Stuff. Seriously
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