JuneAmy went to the vet hospital in Madison today
as an emergency - she has not eaten on her own since Sunday & then only a
little bit, had had only one poop since Saturday, & was starting to have
some difficulty breathing. Today she had xrays of abdomen & chest,
an abdominal ultrasound, bloodwork, & fine needle aspirate.
The news is all bad & very bad. She has
large cell lymphoma which is very fast growing. Ini dogs it can literally go
from nothing to a critical mass in days; in cats it can be only weeks. Which
explains why no one at the clinic ever felt it. There is a huge mass in
her abdomen, her liver is "inundated" with cancer (vet's words"), with
multiple masses in spleen & lymph nodes. There is a suspicious spot
on one of her lungs (they will analzye that further tomomrrow moning as the
lung xrays were taken late), & there may be kidney involvement too. The
prognosis is very poor. The vet says she is amazed that she is not looking
& acting much sicker than she does considering the amount of cancer she
has. She said that if I had not brought her in, she would probably be
gone in days.
We discussed options & the complicating
factors of the FIV. The vet noted that JuneAmy had clearly had a rough
life & has aged physiologically far beyond her years. Despite the fact
that many cats do respond well to chemo for lymphoma, with this particular
kind the very best hope for prolonging life is a maximum of 6 months &
that is generally when the cat is healthy to begin with. She felt that if we
treat & JuneAmy responds to treatment, we might get a month or
two.
So more discussion. The Madison oncology protocol
in well known in veterinary circles but my vet there felt that JuneAmy could
not tolerate it, that it is too aggressive & might kill her, given her
condition. So what we are doing is tentative. Today she had a subq
injection of 2000 units of l'asparginase & she will have 10 mg of
prednisone daily for 7 days at which time, if she is responding, they want to
see her again & would begin some version of the full protocol. If she does
NOT respond, then there is no hope whatsoever. And we will know about that in
the next few days. If she does not respond, I will let her go. We
don't think she is in any pain, but she is uncomfortable & depressed. I
don't want to prolong that either. If she does respond & starts to eat
& seems to feel better & can have that for a few months, then I want
to give that to her. But if she does not, then I can't prolong things any
further, for her sake.
Meanwhile if she wants to eat, she can have
anything she wants. I picked up some frozen fish filets in case she would like
that. I will get some chicken livers tomorrow if I can, for sauteing. If
she doesn't eat on her own, then I will spoonfeed her A/D. I know the
cancer is "eating" a lot of what she takes in, but I still have to give her
the full component of calories per day. I have some PolyMVA left over from
Troika & since the expiration date is not until 2008, I will give her that
too.
This was not the way it was supposed to be. She
was supposed to live happily ever after, or at least some years, until some
FIV-related thing reared its head. She's been here only a bit over 2
months! I emailed Robert, the shelter owner in NYC where she was for so
long, & I talked to him on the phone today after I heard the news from the
vets. He is devastated. He loves her too.
Pam
