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Our senior boy Rodney had a lot of blood in his mouth last night, got him to the vet and they're pretty sure it's a squamous cell carcinoma under his tongue. They're doing a biopsy today to confirm. Looks like it's an aggressive cancer, but I'm hoping that since he's getting diagnosed when he has no trouble eating/drinking we can give him some quality time. Has anyone here dealt with this before? If so, how did it go?
Reik fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Mar 18, 2020 |
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Mar 18, 2020 18:01
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How big are the steroid pills? We use gelatin capsules and a pill gun and it has helped a ton with giving cats medications. If it's not cancer, would removing the lymph node be curative? How risky would the surgery be if he continues to bounce back?
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Feb 5, 2021 23:25
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One of our girl cats is having a rough time right now, she has been losing weight due to hypercalcemia that we were thinking was just idiopathic since we had been managing it for a while with alendronate, but she lost about 1lb in a month so we took her in for an ultrasound and they found a mass on her bladder that we've got a presumptive diagnosis of transitional cell carcinoma after a fine-needle aspiration. They sent off her calcium panel though and the ionized calcium is only slightly elevated, which they said doesn't line up with hypercalcemia of malignancy, so they think it's probably her early stage renal disease causing the hypercalcemia and the carcinoma is asymptomatic for now. She's also got arthritis and low-grade chronic pancreatitis in addition to the cancer and renal disease, but besides some back leg stiffness it's really just that she's losing weight. We've got her on cerenia to help with nausea she has from the pancreatitis, gabapentin for the arthritis pain, and mirtazapine to try and get her to eat more, but she's still not gaining and she's around 8lb 10oz right now.
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Feb 15, 2021 20:38
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We had her on cerenia and pantoprazole/ondansetron before her recent stay at the hospital, using ondansetron before and after her weekly alendronate dose and pantoprazole the rest of the time, but the internist said just cerenia should be fine. I'm kind of hoping the oncologist gets her on a steroid since it seems like that could help with appetite, calcium, cancer, and arthritis.
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Feb 16, 2021 02:28
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We first discovered the pancreatitis because she had chronic vomiting so maybe that's why we started with cerenia, I'll ask about the ondansetron though.
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Feb 16, 2021 05:58
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Did you put the glucose monitor on yourself? Our vet did the first few but we started putting them on ourselves and used a few drops of vetbond in addition to the adhesive it comes with. That might help them from ripping it off, and you could also get a little padded collar to around their neck to help them from getting to it as well.
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Feb 18, 2021 23:15
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Ventral EggSac posted:That's a good idea. The vet attached it, and since he got it off so fast she said it was probably not worth trying again. Did you reattach the same one or a new one? The one we got was $60, so I'd like to re-use it if we tried again, the pin is bent though, if that matters. Is the vetbond easy to get off afterward? You'd need to get a new one I think, they're pretty finicky. They're the libre ones, right? We had to use some rubbing alcohol to get the vetbond off.
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Feb 21, 2021 02:31
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Our cat continues to be medically baffling. She got a presumptive diagnosis of Transitional Cell Carcinoma 6 weeks ago when we did an ultrasound to look for the cause of her high calcium levels. We were going to start her on palladia but her appetite was still not great and we found out it was because her pancreatitis was flaring up again so we had been working on getting that under control and she's back to eating well again and putting on weight. Yesterday we noticed she was being weird at the litter box, only peeing a small amount before getting out, going to another litter box, and peeing a small amount again. Assuming this was progression of the cancer we took her in for an ultrasound today before finally starting her on palladia, and apparently her tumor has shrunk slightly and was visibly less dense in the ultrasound despite her getting no cancer treatment since her diagnosis.
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Mar 30, 2021 05:49
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Do you all think a vet be willing to give a second opinion with a phone consultation if they're provided extensive history/lab results? We took one of our cats to the ER yesterday based on some lab work that came back from our family vet to get her evaluated and the ICU doctor there said pretty much there was no viable treatment path and recommended euthanasia. The summary of her condition is: Hemolytic Anemia with an RBC of ~15, Moderate CKD, and Heart Failure (I don't know how this is measured, but he said there is some metric and hers measured 15 times normal?). He said that treating the Heart Failure could put her in to Kidney Failure, treating the Anemia would exacerbate the heart failure, and the fluids needed to stabilize the kidneys would also exacerbate the heart failure. Visibly, she looks like she did a month ago, she's eating/eliminating/playing, will still climb cat trees, etc. We're timing her breathing and she's at about 32 breaths per minute, the ICU doctor said the fluids around her chest/lungs were relatively low, with the majority of the fluids around her abdomen. At a minimum we wanted to prevent her from hitting the tipping point until Monday so if she has to go we can do it with our family vet, so he gave her an injection of a diuretic to help with the fluids and a low dosage of oral diuretics to take home. We just want to make sure that if there's a viable treatment path we leave no stone unturned, but if she does only have days left we don't want to waste them driving her an hour to see a specialist.
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May 16, 2021 15:14
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Yes, there is pleural and abdominal free fluid. Our plan was to talk to our primary vet tomorrow and see what she thinks, the last time we talked to her she recommended we take our cat to the ER to be evaluated but she did not seem to think her situation was life-threatening unless her anemia got worse. If she is not in heart failure, is 12.5 mg of furosemide twice a day (she weighs 12lb) until we can get her in to see another vet going to cause significant damage to the kidneys? Our family vet said she had heard a murmur before and heard a gallop on her last checkup, but she said thinning of the blood due to anemia could cause that. Reik fucked around with this message at 17:30 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 17:23
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She got a furosemide injection yesterday and we gave her her first dose this morning, and I'm counting her at ~24 breaths per minute while she's asleep. The 32 breaths was when she was awake but at rest.
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May 16, 2021 23:17
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She has been stable since Saturday, we talked to our vet on Monday and she didn't disagree with the ER vet's findings, just that his timetable was probably a bit rushed because he hadn't seen the slow progress on what she has going on. We're taking her in today for a re-check on the numbers and if she thinks she can handle it some ultrasound/x-rays to try and see if what she has going on is treatable. For the heart disease, her NT-proBNP number was 1500, which is why the ER vet said she was in heart failure when paired with the pleural and abdominal fluids.
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May 21, 2021 16:24
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Her RBC is relatively stable, 14.7 this time vs 15.0 previously, although she was a little dehydrated this time. She's got mild fluid around the lungs and moderate fluids around the abdomen, but her left atrium is only mildly dilated while her left ventricle looks normal. Her fluid pump ability does look lower, and she still hears the murmur and gallop. Her kidneys are doing well with the Lasix, values are relatively unchanged since last checkup, so her kidney disease is still moderate. They're sending the imaging off to a specialist to look at and make sure they didn't miss anything, but the big questions are still: what is causing the fluid buildup if it's not heart disease, and what is causing the anemia if it's not IMHA. We're gonna see if we can get her in to see an internist next week.
Reik fucked around with this message at 00:14 on May 22, 2021 |
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May 22, 2021 00:09
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We had to say goodbye to Tulip today. On saturday she started going downhill, ragged breathing and tremors so we took her in to the ER. With the recent ultrasound they decided to go ahead with a transfusion and she got through it without complications and we brought her home last night. She was still sluggish but eating, using the litter box, and purring, but today she started to open mouth breathe and had moments where she wasn't breathing at all so we had to let her go.
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May 24, 2021 19:58
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Sekhmet posted:Hello I used to post here sometimes a long time ago, but I am a DVM in the US (hopefully not for too much longer) finishing up a residency in Neurology/Neurosurgery. Good to see some new people around. I probably can't contribute a ton to helping people with routine medical stuff since I have effectively expunged most non-neuro knowledge from my brain after passing the ACVIM General boards a few months ago. But HI! Welcome back! We took our cat in for a dental yesterday and the vet noticed his heart rate dropped to around 80 while under anesthesia. They did a bunch of cardio tests and sent it off to a cardiologist for review and they don't think there's any heart issues going on, his heart rhythm was normal just with long gaps between beats, and the cardiologist suggested he may just have a vagal tone that responds to anesthesia? Our vet said it's possible but she hasn't seen a cat with that in her 32 years of practice and brought up how mellow he is. He's an incredible chill cat, we'll catch him just zoning out sitting and staring at nothing for hours. Not like, laying down sleeping, just sitting on the counters looking at seemingly nothing. If it is a brain lesion or old trauma it seems to not have a material affect on his quality of life, our vet's plan was to just wait until the next time he has to be put under anesthesia and give him atropine? before since that would prevent the anesthesia from affecting his vagal tone, but even trying to Google this for more information yields no results. Is this something that would be in your wheelhouse? They also thought it might be gastrointestinal related since that can apparently affect the vagal nerve so we're gonna send that GI panel thing to Texas A&M to check, but he doesn't have any gastro symptoms as far as we can tell.
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Sep 1, 2021 00:16
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I think the vet said the anesthesia they used was buprenorphine, propofol, and isoflurane, but his heart rate didn't drop until the isoflurane? She also said she only had to give him like 1/4 to 1/8 of the isoflurane they normally use, I think she said they sustained him at 0.5% isoflurane when they normally use 2-3%?
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Sep 1, 2021 06:36
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Thanks for the replies, the vet made it sound like it wasn't something to worry about, just something to have on file for the next time he needs anesthesia, it was just surprising to me that I couldn't find anything online about anesthesia affecting feline's heart rate. Usually when something is going on with our cats even if it's rare condition I can at least find some research on it to help me understand it better.
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Sep 6, 2021 14:27
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We give our dog Whimzees, they're dental stick things that are mostly potato starch and glycerin, only like 1% protein. https://www.chewy.com/whimzees-brushzees-grain-free-natural/dp/49771
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Sep 8, 2021 17:02
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I was walking our dog a couple sundays ago and there was a stray puppy (approx 6 months) at the park, we took her in to our family vet the next day and they did x-rays and it looks like she got hit by a car or something a month ago. We got her in to see a specialist today, and both vets seem surprised that she was walking. She's got: Mid diaphyseal fracture of all of the right metatarsals, chronic - healing as malunion with lateral displacement Femoral neck fracture, left, chronic Femoral neck + greater trochanter fracture, right, chronic - minimally displaced We've had her on pain and anti-inflammatory meds since the first vet visit and she's still been able to get around, but we're limiting how much activity she gets. They said surgery to reset the right metatarsals would be pretty complicated or potentially end up as an amputation, and they didn't expect it to cause and long term issues, so they recommended against that. We're gonna do an FHO for the left leg, but they don't think we'll need to do one for the right, which I guess means that even though the femur is broken it's not grinding against the hip? Does this all seem on the up and up, or is there something else we should be asking about? Looking online the prognosis for an FHO seems good, so I'm hoping we can get her to pretty much normal quality of life.  
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Sep 9, 2021 21:22
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Alexithymia posted:Hello. Need help concerning administering pills to cats. I am part of a cat shelter's med team, and getting my feet wet. After medding like 5 cats easily/quickly, I got a fairly sweet cat foaming and pissed at me, was able to pill them, but it really wasn't pretty. I had to try multiple times, then towel her. I got bit, I bled. I know now to not open a cat's mouth from anywhere besides the front teeth. That being said here have to be ways to make it quicker/easier. https://www.amazon.com/Jorgensen-Pet-Piller/dp/B0002ZAG84/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=jorgensen+pet+piller&qid=1639094323&s=pet-supplies&sr=1-2 This is the piller we use at home for our cats. We put everything we can in a capsule and we're on our second bag of 1,000 count capsules so we've had good results with it. We had a kitty with chronic pancreatitis so she was getting like cerenia, pantoprazole, and/or ondansatron at different times and putting them all in to a single capsule made it a lot easier. In other news, we found out one cat has small cell lymphoma, when our puppy was going in to get spayed they heard a heart murmur that they didn't hear a couple months ago when she had her FHO so she's seeing a cardiologist tomorrow, and our dog with a sterile abscess from a necrotic lipoma we were planning to get removed at the end of the month was in pain so we took her in and they found a nodule on her spleen, so she's got emergency surgery tomorrow to remove the abscessed lipoma and spleen. Just praying to whatever is out there it's benign since it doesn't look like the nodule was causing the pain/issues, just the abscess.
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Dec 10, 2021 01:07
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Our puppy has pulmonary stenosis and cor triatrium dexter. We're going in for a ct scan next week and scheduling surgery within a couple weeks. The cardiologist seemed optimistic about surgical treatment, but it appears to be a pretty rare thing.
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Dec 10, 2021 21:31
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Reik posted:Our puppy has pulmonary stenosis and cor triatrium dexter. We're going in for a ct scan next week and scheduling surgery within a couple weeks. The cardiologist seemed optimistic about surgical treatment, but it appears to be a pretty rare thing. Puppy finally had her surgery this week to correct these (she's a lot bigger now!), they ended up putting in a stent in the membrane separating her right atrium to re-join the two chambers and then they did a a balloon valvuloplasty to correct the pulmonic stenosis. She also has an atrial septal perforation so blood can still get from the right atrium over to the left atrium, but they did some bubble tests and it looks like at least half of the bubbles were going the right way, so half of her blood isn't skipping the pulmonary circuit anymore, and they were seeing almost normal forward blood flow through the pulmonary valve now. She's gotta be sedated in a crate for like 4 weeks to make sure she doesn't dislodge the stent, but hopefully these two fixes stop progression of any heart disease. 
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Mar 17, 2022 17:59
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We noticed a bunch of bumps/hives on our dog yesterday so we took her to the vet, they gave her a benadryl and steroid shot and the bumps went away, then they said we could give her benadryl for like 3-5 days. Since the bumps completely cleared by the time we went to bed I assumed they wouldn't be back and didn't give her any, but about half an hour ago some bumps/hives came back, which would've been like 20-22 hours after the vet visit. Is it something that we should worry about, or was I just an idiot for not starting the benadryl last night? I ran to the store to buy it and gave her a dose like 10 minutes ago, waiting to see if the bumps clear up now.
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Oct 3, 2022 19:48
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