hi Stacy We are anxiously awaiting more news. I admire your courage in forging ahead and covering all bases while waiting for results. With Spanky's spunk and your care, I know you will carve out more wonderful time with this sweet baby. You can try Denamarin for him for his liver - it's basically the pharmaceutical companies 'discovering' sam-e/milk thistle and selling it - or you could just do that on your own with health food supplements (do research as to dosage, check other ingredients etc) . - only natural pet http://www.onlynaturalpet.com sells a liver supplement for kitties (several) - that's an option too. My FIV boy has cholangeal hepatitis and we go thru liver issues - 2 wks on Denamarin brings them back to normal. You might want to try this from your vet to see how he reacts. My guy, when it's combined with antibiotics, looses his appetite. On it's own, it's ok IF I give about an hour before meals. They will tell you to give at bedtime so it's on an empty tummy but it never worked for us. Even giving before dinner was still effective. It was reasonably priced. here's the link for more info...looks like you can get it from this site but your vet might be quicker.... http://www.nutramaxlabs.com/vet/products/Denamarin.aspx hugs to sweet Spanky, Shannon and Whimsy
--- On Wed, 12/1/10, Stacy Zacher <stacy_zac...@yahoo.com> wrote: From: Stacy Zacher <stacy_zac...@yahoo.com> Subject: [Felvtalk] waiting for Spanky's biopsy results To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Date: Wednesday, December 1, 2010, 4:27 PM Thanks to everyone for all the purrayers and sending healing thoughts for Spanky. I'm still waiting for the vet to get his biopsy results back and call me. She said it could be today or tomorrow. We got there at 9:30am yesterday, they did a blood panel, quick ultrasound to see if the mass was still there. It was :-(. Regarding his blood test results - everything except his WBC and related counts were normal last time (about a month ago). This time his liver values are elevated slightly AST is 55 (range 14-54), ALT is 147 (range 26-128)(from pred?), wbc is up from 2400 to 6(from pred?), phosphorus seems very low at 2.2(range 2.7-7.5) (which I've read isn't really an issue?) and his Red blood cells (4.86 and range is 5.8-11.00) and hematocrit (was 32 last time, now 26.1 and range is 28-47)are down again just below normal. Also low were the lymphocyte absolute# at 0.31 (range 1.00-7.90) and eosinophil absolute# at 0.00 (range 0.10-2.00). It says rare giant platelets are present. In the vet's report, all it says is that she did the fine needle aspirate and also took fluids from his chest for analysis. The slides she reviewed did have concerning cells that are most likely "lymphoma" but there are some other cells she's not sure of without the pathologist looking at them. She said from the ultrasound the tumor shrank about 30-40% from the prednisolone but it was still there. So that wasn't a good sign to her. Isn't that a good thing if the tumor shrinks? How long does it take to eradicate it if prednisolone alone would do that or is that unlikely? So we are just waiting. Spanky did so well (they had to sedate him for the procedure) and was there all day. I picked him up and he gobbled food and drank water and was wound up. He finally settled down and rested. How long can he stay on prednisolone? He's been on it a week today and tolerates it very well. He's just so thin now - down to 8.25 lbs from 8.8 last week (maybe due to fluids being removed?). Based on what she finds the type of tumor he has, I'll go from there as far as what kind of treatment. I guess I am wondering how long he would have with just prednisolone, or if we did leukeran and pred or the vincristine/pred. I was looking at the route with the least side effects given his felv+ status. Then again, I am entirely speculating that he has lymphoma and still not sure if he does or what type. If anyone has any ideas to try to help the liver values - I posted in the past about adenosyl and not sure about milk thistle...but had never had to use either on him yet. He's on 5mg of prednisolone 2x a day, 250 mg rutin 2x a day (to try to reduce fluids in his chest), 15mg CoQ10 per day, 1ML of pet-tinic 2x a day currently. Thanks so much for reading my ramblings and thanks again for all your support. Stacy and Spanky _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
