WWTBAM Bored

He just started going downhill a little over a week ago. The vet I finally got to do a home visit said there was little I could do with saline & steroids but prolong his life a few days. They could feel multiple tumors, one on his liver. He was very anemic. He had stopped eating this week, but was drinking right up to before they killed him. With my permission.

He wasn't acting as if he were in pain. Just lethargic. They said the pain was in his immediate future.

They think it was advanced lymphoma, & had been developing for a couple months, probably.

The younger me would have dragged him into surgery, & plenty of treatment thereafter, like I did with Tracy. Who died anyway.

The younger me would have had the tumors biopsied, just in case the vet was wrong.

This vet says advanced lymphoma in elderly cats isn't really treatable.

This cat never, at just-turned-17, had a chance to feel elderly, except for the past couple weeks.

My condolences.

Ghost, I am so very sorry.

For what it's worth, I think you did the right thing for Tucker. After Annie's long journey through chaos, she developed an untreatable tumor in her nose, which spread quickly into her eye and her brain. When she had nothing in her future except agony, I too called for the vet's departure-in-a-needle. I could not bear the thought that, after everything she had gone through already, she might suffer one more minute of misery without any hope of recovery.

Oh ghostie, I'm so sorry. Lucky cat was 17, too! They can compare numbers over the bridge.

Ahh ghost I am so sorry. You did right by your buddy. Hugs!

I feel for you, ghost. Truly I do.

We just said goodbye to our Gypsy last week. Kidneys went on the ol' gal. She too would've been 17 this summer. Perhaps they can share some catnip on the other side of that Rainbow Bridge.

Oh T-Bone I'm so sorry. I never gave Tuck catnip because he was such a berserker without it. I have lots of pictures of him but now I wish I'd recorded his ridiculous Siamese squawk.

I wish I'd been doing home-visit vet visits with him for years. I only thought of it when he stopped eating & started becoming feeble. 2 weeks ago he was still jumping buildings with a single bound. The vet said we would have had to catch this 2 months ago to be able to even think of treating it.

But if he'd had vet visits, they'd have treated his *hyperthyroidism; vet said that was unrelated to the cancer but was what was making him pee so much this last year. If the treatment had involved pills, I'd have never gotten them down him, & I've even been able to get friend's cats to swallow pills, as well as my late Dipper.

My bargain with vet-hating Tuck was that I'd never torture him again that way if he'd never get sick again.

This home-visit vet said it was good that he was purring. That was before the diagnosis.

*edited to change "hypothyroidism" to *hyperthyroidism* because that's from the symptoms what he had. Easily treatable, but still the treatment would have been problematic in this aging cat who hated vets. And would have hated me if I'd had to try to give him daily pills to replace thyroid hormones after they'd wiped out, in one of many ways, his thyroid.

Condolences to both ghost and TBone on one of life's suckiest eventualities....

lb13

Add my condolences to the pot. I'm sorry to hear about both kitties.

Ditto on both. So sorry Mr Bone.

Hugs to T-bone too.

Well loved buddies, to reach such a great age.

Sorry to hear that, Ghost. Condolences to you and your household.

Thanks for the condolences, folks. Much 'preciated. And sorry ghost for sorta hijacking the thread.

Its OK, T-Bone. Its not a hi-jack, its just 2 babies gone.

I'm just wondering how I could have been petting my cat so much & missed so many lumps. He was chubby enough until the last couple weeks it just felt like "cat" to me.

Even when the vet had me feel them.

I'm sorry for your losses, Ghost and T-Bone. 17 years of love is a good life for a kitty.

Well done, Tucker and Gypsy -- you beat the odds. We haven't had a cat get past 15 yet.

Hope there's a new little furball in both futures soon.

One thing I've learned from my reading on a condition the vet says Tuck had, hyperthyroidism, which had to have developed recently because the vet at Angell Memorial during the bladder stones diagnosis in 2016, at which Tuck went berserk, 2nd such episode, on the vets & needed 3 shots of sedation followed by general anesthesia to stop wiggling enough to be X-rayed, didn't say he had it, is:

They can deliver drugs to "calm down the thyroid" by transdermal patches.

I hope they have other drugs for cats these days for which they have such patches. Its an absolutely brilliant idea. For anything that's effective when absorbed transdermally. Especially for fierce little animals who its hard to get pills down. As long as you can attach the patch to some area of shaved skin the cat can't get to to claw it off.

A cone collar would stop the clawing-off, but make it not a good idea for long-term treatment.

I wish they had a time-delayed patch through which I could absorb my insulin. Which, as a diabetic, I *have* to take by under-skin injection (insulin gets destroyed if it goes through your stomach). The injection is not the tough part, but I'd like absorption rate to be controlled by some delayed-release mechanism.

I found this great site I can't get to copy for some reason, which talks about many meds for cats you can have a pharmacy make into a paste or gel. Then you put it on a hairless part of the cat's ear flap, so no cone-collar needed.

vet site is Belle Mead Animal Hospital in NJ. They have some much-used meds made up ahead of time.

Hope this helps someone.

ghostjmf wrote:One thing I've learned from my reading on a condition the vet says Tuck had, hyperthyroidism, which had to have developed recently because the vet at Angell Memorial during the bladder stones diagnosis in 2016, at which Tuck went berserk, 2nd such episode, on the vets & needed 3 shots of sedation followed by general anesthesia to stop wiggling enough to be X-rayed, didn't say he had it, is:

They can deliver drugs to "calm down the thyroid" by transdermal patches.

I hope they have other drugs for cats these days for which they have such patches. Its an absolutely brilliant idea. For anything that's effective when absorbed transdermally. Especially for fierce little animals who its hard to get pills down. As long as you can attach the patch to some area of shaved skin the cat can't get to to claw it off.

A cone collar would stop the clawing-off, but make it not a good idea for long-term treatment.

I wish they had a time-delayed patch through which I could absorb my insulin. Which, as a diabetic, I *have* to take by under-skin injection (insulin gets destroyed if it goes through your stomach). The injection is not the tough part, but I'd like absorption rate to be controlled by some delayed-release mechanism.

When I had a hyperthyroid they gave me a very small tablet of methimazole. A cat-sized dose would be minuscule so I suppose a liquid dose would be best.

Bob J: The Belle Mead site, which I can't get this tablet to copy the address of for some reason, goes into detail on how you have to measure this stuff very carefully, & rub it on the cat's ear using a one-finger-glove, so you don't absorb any yourself, which you discard carefully.

Drugs can always be extended with an inactive base substance if a dose would be too tiny to measure accurately otherwise.

I'm glad hear your thyroid problem was resolved through medication. I knew someone with a tumor, so their thyroid had to be destroyed by radiation. They do this for cats too. Makes the patient radioactive for a while, so they have to be isolated.

ghostjmf wrote:Bob J: The Belle Mead site, which I can't get this tablet to copy the address of for some reason, goes into detail on how you have to measure this stuff very carefully, & rub it on the cat's ear using a one-finger-glove, so you don't absorb any yourself, which you discard carefully.

Drugs can always be extended with an inactive base substance if a dose would be too tiny to measure accurately otherwise.

I'm glad hear your thyroid problem was resolved through medication. I knew someone with a tumor, so their thyroid had to be destroyed by radiation. They do this for cats too. Makes the patient radioactive for a while, so they have to be isolated.

They checked to see if radiation would work on me but my thyroid wasn't absorbing enough iodine so that would be effective. Essentially I had iodine poisoning.

Thanks all people who said nice things.

I'm still almost-seeing him everywhere in the house.

He'll never make a break for it down the stairs, where I chase him back up & tell him he's an indoor cat, again.

ghostjmf wrote:Thanks all people who said nice things.

I'm still almost-seeing him everywhere in the house.

He'll never make a break for it down the stairs, where I chase him back up & tell him he's an indoor cat, again.

I remember feeling the Beebs around after we put him down.