China Countdown: 0

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now. A little over a month ago I took my cat, China, in for her regular chemo appointment. As far as I knew, she had two more to go after that one. HOWEVER, when I showed up they told me "China doesn't have an appointment today". She what??!?!? Well, she did have one scheduled, but they said if I counted the chemo that China had prior to her radiation treatments, when she was still getting chemo at Sequoia, she had done her full two years and was done.

They wanted to see her and weigh her but that would only take a minute and then they'd have her right back to me.

WHAT?!?!?

They looked at me expectantly, like they'd just asked me to pretend I'd been selected as the next contestant on "The Price Is Right" (and the price was right that day, because the visit was free) but I didn't know what to say or do. Take China in every week or every two weeks or even once a month for her chemo treatments...that's what I DO. I was like "oh, ah...I see, that's um...great. Yeah, great."

They're still looking at me, smiling, waiting. So I ask, "Well, um....so...she's done with chemo so now...I mean...what does that MEAN? Is she okay now? Is the lymphoma going to come back when she stops? Is it going to manifest somewhere else? If it comes back will it metastasize? What do I do? What are her chances?"

(I've tried to look this stuff up online, but I think it's just somewhat rare for a cat to undergo radiation treatments plus two years of chemo and prednisone....so I've never seen anyone say "my cat went through all this and THEN THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED.")

The vet says her chances for the next six months are about 50%. (Sheesh, I think it was better than that when she was on the chemo!) and to please know that I did everything I could (which instantly makes me think of every little mistake I made in the last two years that was definitely not everything I could do...but hey, I did try most of the time...I hired limos for her, force fed her, gave her subcutaneous fluids, gave her vile cherry flavored syrups, picked her nose, let her sleep under the covers and sneeze snot all over me, gave up plans I had in order to give her medication every eight hours, bought a zillion types of catfood from B.A.R.F. to Hill's Prescription Diet, ordered herbal remedies from as far away as New Zealand, and spent about $20,000 total...and I know that's what she means, but really, literally, there are times I slacked off, and that's all I can think of when she says this to me.) But, she says, IF China makes it past the next six months, her chances are VERY VERY good. Six months is the magic number.

So, I'm supposed to go home, take her by the local vet often to weigh her and make sure she's not losing weight, and that's it. So long and thanks for all the money. (Well, I don't begrudge them the money, I just feel a bit cast adrift here.)

So, I go and take my $20,000 cancer surviving (for now) kitty home and I feel totally lost. She seemed perkier already to be home quicker than usual and without having had any chemo meds that day, but those chemo meds weren't only beating her down, they were supposed to be beating down malignant cells at the same time and now they aren't there to do that.

She hates going to the vet, and I feel like I need to organize her phonebook size stack of discharge and treatment paperwork to extract out things like what she has been tested for and what antibiotics she's been on before taking her to the local vet, as what vet is going to take the time to read hundreds of pages on one small animal? So I bought a pet scale to use at home. Okay, it's actually a baby scale but on Amazon a lot of people said they use it for their pets. I've been tracking her weight on that, and she IS down a little, but I ordered six new kinds of catfood and I'm hoping she'll really like at least one of them (maybe the vegan one!) I also got to weigh my other cat...he thinks the scale is fun to lie on...and he only weighs 14 pounds! Not too bad for the cat that looked so fat in that "going in and out of the cat door" video.

Right now I'm worried about China's running nose (not that it hasn't been running for two years now) and so I've started giving her Vibramycin 2X a day again. The vet had originally thought if she responded well to it, the prescription could be used a number of times over the course of a year. SO, although I wasn't specifically told to do this, I put her back on it. Who's going to tell me to do it or not do it now anyway, huh? She did throw it up a few times in the past and there was some worry about esophageal damage, but she was also on chemo at that time and the pharmacy had accidentally doubled her dosage the first time, so I hope this time will be better, and she does have some Sucralfate in case it bothers her again. If this doesn't help, or when it stops helping, I got a new kitty stroller this week so I will be ready to take her back to the local vet.

I guess there's a new countdown now...the six month countdown during which I hold my breath to see if any lymphoma symptoms return.

One thing I do really believe is that it is diet that causes cancer in cats and dogs, the same as in people. Well not causes...that's the wrong way to put it. More like it's the awful things you eat that help cancer grow when it shows up, instead of your body just ousting it like it's supposed to. It's hard because...what the heck do you feed your cats? If I had a dog, I'd feed them a vegan diet in a heartbeat, but cats are carnivores by nature. Carnivores, but that doesn't mean they should be eating the animal by-products that have been marked as unfit for human consumption. I think that's awful. The food we eat ourselves tends to be a bunch of crap, but the food we feed our companion animals is just EVER-SO-MUCH worse! People should demand better a better product from pet food manufacturers or else make it themselves...otherwise more and more people will probably find themselves in the position of either having their pet put to sleep OR spending a huge crapload of money on treatments that will make buying premium, natural, organic, human-grade pet food seem like quite a bargain in comparison.