Hi Amy! I'm so sorry to hear about Shelby! I, too, had a cat with a mass that turned out to be in the juction between his stomach and small intenstines (the doctors, at first, thought it was his spleen). I found a way to pay for the surgery to remove the mass...but, unfortunately, with Feleuk cats, treatment can be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenerio...the surgery removed the mass, but the *stress* of the surgery gave the leukemia a chance to take hold and Pips became anemic towards the end. He also had lymphoma which didn't respond to the chemo that we started shortly after his surgery. I'm sorry to say that we lost Pips only a few weeks after his surgery... :(
I honestly don't know what I would have done differently given what I know now...perhaps skipped the surgery and gone with pred and chemo and just have made him as comfortable as possible...it's hard to say... I'm sending out positive vibes for you both...this virus just really, really sucks... -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Amy Wilkins Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 1:21 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: Shelby - Tumor in Abdomen I haven't written in some time but I have a question about one of my cats with leukemia. I took her to the vet Friday for a check up and blood work (I take all my cats every 6 months). She has a lump in her abdomen that was not there in January of this year when she had an x-ray. She is 4 years old and has had leukemia since I found her and her 3 kittens a couple years ago. The vet thinks it is cancer, maybe in the spleen. She recommended that I have an ultrasound if I want to do any additional treatment. If I get the ultrasound, I can see if the cancer is really in the spleen and if it has spread elsewhere. If it has spread elsewhere, they recommend I do nothing or consider chemo. If it just in the spleen, they said I could consider removing the spleen, doing chemo, or doing nothing. Does anybody have experience with this? Has anybody done the chemo, had tumors removed surgically, etc? I want to give my girl every chance but I don't want to put her through all sorts of treatment for nothing. Her ultrasound is Thursday so I wanted to try to get any suggestions/advice I could before then. Only one of my leuk positives has had tumors. They recommended surgery, opened him up, and found out it was all intertwined in the mesentary of his intestines and it couldn't be removed. They biopsied it but it spread to his lungs before the biopsy results even came back. He didn't make it and when the results came back, they said it was the most aggressive cancer they'd ever seen. Should I expect the same for Shelby, my cat that has this tumor? Amy Wilkins Woof Wagon www.woofwagon.com __________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger Show us what our next emoticon should look like. Join the fun. http://www.advision.webevents.yahoo.com/emoticontest
