S**t Michelle,
What the heck is going on with Lucy now?? It's very good that she's
still acting herself for the most part. Could it be that she's just
off her food? I'm praying it's not the dreaded lymphoma, I know that's
always in the back of your mind. Why don't you try Gypsy's turkey mush
recipe and see if that helps? It makes me so crazy that the
internist's office won't make an appointment for you. What would you
do, if after the exploratory surgery they still didn't have a
definitive answer about her condition? Would you treat her for cancer
anyway? If that's what you would do, why don't you talk to your
regular vet about prescribing what is necessary? They might be more
willing to do that, (heck, you'd be able to prescribe what's needed
better than most vets anyway), when you tell them you took their
advice, but the specialty clinic isn't able to give you an
appointment. I'm sorry sweetheart, you seem to be between that rock
and hard place once again. If it were me, (so impossible to know what
I'd do until I was actually faced with it), I think I would continue to
assume it is her IBD and not cancer that is causing her symptoms. How
old is Lucy again? If her diarrhea is back, that would explain why
she's not being as naughty as usual. Do you still have her on turkey
and Instincts TC? Why don't you mince up a turkey breast, leaving out
the TC and see if she gobbles it down? Gypsy responded to plain muscle
meat when she was so sick. When you start adding supplements, you
could do it individually, that way you could play around with the
ratios and see if lowering/upping them might help.
Prayers and good wishes from our tribe to yours,
Nina
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Lucy, who is positive, has had what we assume to be IBD since
last October. After an initial dosing of prednisone and tapering to
only 1.25 mg every 3 days, and a change to a raw food diet, she has
been doing well for the last 6 months or so. However, in the last few
weeks she started to get a nib of white mucous on the end of her
otherwise normal bowels, and losing weight. At this point she has
degenerated to having very loose stool, pretty much diarrhea (her
problem is in the colon or lower intestines, so the diarrhea is never
really watery or anything), not wanting to eat much of her raw food,
and she is down to 8.2 pounds (normally over 9 pounds). She is acting
normal, basically, besides this-- wanting to go outside, hunting (I try
not to let her do that), playing, etc. Her only behavior change,
besides not wanting her raw food much, is that she usually hides around
the corner when Patches uses the litter box and hits her as she comes
out (devil-- I try not to let her do this either), and she has stopped
doing that. But she played with a string this morning and is bright
eyed and bushy tailed, not dehydrated, etc. She has stopped eating her
raw food before and I have had to change the kind of meat I use, so it
is not the first time for that. She also has lost this much weight
before, as her weight fluctuates a lot, so this is not the first time
for that either. But, other than when she drank a bowl of olive oil 2
months ago (yes, unbelievable as it sounds, she did drink a bowl of oil
and it did not sit well with her!) she has not had diarrhea while on
raw food. I put her back up to 10 mg/day of pred yesterday. She had
been at 5 for the last week.
What I am worried about is intestinal lymphoma. FeLV+ cats are
prone to it, as are cats with IBD, and she has both. The only way to
diagnose that is with surgical biopsy where they remove a section of
intestine, but they often can not distinguish even then between severe
IBD and low-grade lymphoma. They treat both the same, with prednisone
and an oral chemo drug called Leukeran (chlorambucil), and cats often
do well for months to years on that. But they often insist on trying
to do the biopsy before prescribing this regimen.
I took Lucy yesterday to the local vet. He thinks I should get a
biopsy at a referral center an hour away. I have not wanted to do this
in the past, because it is surgery and because Lucy gets really
stressed by car rides and vet visits. But I am feeling now like I
should at least go talk to an internist, because I am doing everything
that has worked before, and it is not working now. It could just be an
IBD flare-up, which is what I hope, but it could be lymphoma, which can
be quickly fatal without treatment. Of course, I called this morning to
try to make an appointment, and they say they are only open for
emergencies until Wednesday and I can not even talk to anyone to
schedule an appointment until then.
If anyone has any thoughts or opinions on what is going on and
what I should do, I would really appreciate it. Nina-- I also put Lucy
back on the homeopathics Darla had prescribed, also to no avail.
Thanks,
Michelle
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