Most of you already know that our cat Bunny had cancer for a year and a half or so. Today, we decided it was Time. His appetite has dropped off markedly this week and it seemed clear that he was going to soon get worse, and not better.
I am thankful that we had a long time to pamper him and I am pretty sure he wasn’t suffering. But, it is still awful and we are still very sad.
It looks like Bunny most likely has lymphoma (i.e. cancer) at a moderate stage. We are both very sad about this, obviously.
At this point we’re not sure where it is, or how bad it is, but we’re pretty sure we don’t want to go the chemo route. We want to focus on making sure he is not in pain and that he’s enjoying himself.
We will keep everyone updated.
Sophie passed away at 3:18.
Sophie has had a bad week, health-wise. The upshot of it is, unless her status changes dramatically for the better over the weekend, we will most likely have a painful-but-pretty-clear decision to make on Monday.
We have known this was coming, so we are as prepared as we could have been, but it’s still hard. She has been with us longer than we’ve been married, so she is close to 18. We have had a long and happy time together, but that doesn’t make it any easier either.
I will keep everyone posted. Thank you as always for your kind support.
I forgot to post about this yesterday, but Sophie had a full-on seizure, right in the middle of everything that was happening with Harley. This was Saturday at 3:20 pm. She started off twitching a little, and then went into convulsions with her entire body involved.
I quickly hustled her into a box and started off toward the emergency vet. About 2 min into the trip she realized she was in a box (and got her wind back, most likely) and started complaining.
According to the emergency clinic doctor, seizures can happen as a result of insulin overdose and resulting low-low blood glucose. We are going to need to back off the insulin, and test her much more often than we have been doing. We’re going to go from 3 units twice a day to just 1 unit, maybe 2, just in the morning. More testing will tell us if that’s the right level.
Sophie is our oldest, and she so far just keeps going, like a tank.
Miche already posted about this, but I wanted to post also, for anyone who is on my flist and not hers.
Harley died at about 5:40 today. It became clear to us that it was time to let him go. In addition to the pretty rampant cancer (stage 5 lymphoma) he was facing additional challenges, including leukemia (due to cancer, not viral), loss of liver function, not enough protein in the blood and resulting leakage of fluid into his abdomen, and finally pneumonia. Treatment for all of these would have been grueling and the prognosis still grim. I truly believe we made the right decision to try and fight it, but the aggressive chemo took its toll.
We spent about a half hour with him before doing the deed. He was clearly happy to see us and after a while, ended up going to sleep while we were petting him, and the doctor was able to give injections without startling him, so he just dozed off and a few moments later, was gone.
Harley had his second chemo today. We’re trying to get him to eat but so far he’s not interested in any food.
It’s going to be a challenge to keep him eating and hydrated. Current plan is to just keep offering food, every hour, through the night too.
He has had a lot of different meds (chemo itself, steriod, anti-diarrhea and anti-nausea) that his grogginess and lack of appetite could be caused by any of those (most likely being the chemo and resulting dead cancer cells getting dumped into his blood to get filtered).
Thanks for the good thoughts, and please keep them coming through the weekend. If he makes it through the weekend then things should get better. This is of course not going to cure him but might bring back the harz we know and love, for a while anyway.
Harley is still in the hospital, 3rd night. His cancer is identified as one of the more serious ones (large cell lymphoma combined with leukemia).
We did get to visit him again today, briefly, and he was happy to see us. Right after seeing us the doctor started him on chemo. Apparently it’s common to give chemo even if surgery isn’t done, and this can sometimes help cats get some quality of life back for a time, but it would be temporary if so.
Thanks to all the well-wishers. I haven’t replied to everyone individually but I will… for now, know that I’m reading all the replies and that I’m very grateful to everone that responded for taking the time to write. Thank you.