Living with chronic disease (cats)

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to prepare myself in advance of a vet visit. Our cat is around 12 and had been looking a bit thin which I first attributed to summer and a lighter coat. Then he started slamming water, increasing urination, and he has stopped burying his poop. He's not really social so I haven't noticed much change there aside from a bit more swatting at us. I've read about the main causes and I'm looking for experienced pet owners to weigh in. If your cat had diabetes/hyperthyroidism/kidney disease do you think it was a good quality of life?
(We just spent 2 years and thousands of dollars to keep and elderly dog alive and in retrospect we feel very guilty for keeping her going for our benefit)

[Anonymous]

I posted a quality of life scale on a different thread earlier this summer--search the archives or just google "cat quality of life scale." There are a few out there that I found helpful this summer. We had a terminal cancer diagnosis in our case, so we knew the time was near and just a question of when. That scale really helped me not wait too long but to let him go while he was clearly ill and could still receive comfort from us but before he was truly miserable, as far as we could tell based on our observations and the scale.

[Anonymous]

My cat was diagnosed with hyerpthyroidism a couple of months ago - 11 years old. He'd lost weight and was just acting a little off. Couldn't quite put my finger on it but seemed like he was eating less and slightly lethargic, but nothing I would notice except that I telecommute and spend almost all day with him.

Anyway, he was a great candidate for the iodine treatment because his kidney levels were fabulous and he was relatively young and otherwise healthy. We took him in for the scans for them to verify the thyroid mass size, etc... and they found a, completely unrelated, huge tumor in his lung that is very unlikely to be anything other than cancer.

The vets were not particularly helpful, in my opinion, on giving guidance on what to do next. Lots of "Well, you just never know," which is true... but I need some data to work with. I did a ton of research and based on what I found, the lung tumor was pretty likely to kill him inside of a year. He showed absolutely no symptoms but it was massive.

The only treatment for the lung tumor is to remove his lung, and that's just too far for us for a cat. I love this cat, I've been his only owner... and I'm not putting him through this procedure that probably will cost $4000+ and there's a good chance the cancer either could have originated elsewhere or spread elsewhere.

We opted not to spend the additional $1k on the iodine treatment given this new information. We started him on methimazole, which is $20 - $30/month depending on dosage. The blood work to check his dosage has been kind of a pain - $58/time and we're doing it every 3 weeks until he levels out. The initially started him on 5 MG and his thyroid dropped from 15 to 0.7 (I think good range is 3 - 7 or something like that). We cut in half and some of his lethargy is back, so I suspect will will up the dose a bit.

He gained back a pound (which is a lot on a 10 lb cat!!) in only 2 weeks on the meds and was doing great. No way you could tell he has a big lung tumor.

I keep going and back and forth with myself wondering if we should have gone ahead with the iodine treatment anyway. The vet made it seem like he wasn't a good candidate anymore, but never outright said that, and I wish I had asked more clearly.

The meds are easy. 2x a day, and my cat (who is very finnicky) takes them easily in Greenie Pill Pockets as long as we cut the pills into fourths. 1/2 a pill pocket gets 1/4 of a pill. If I try to do half a pill in a pocket, he finds it and spits it out.

Some cats do react badly to the meds, and then there is a special food you can try as a last resort for hyperthyroid.

Blood tests @ $58/pop (and the vet keeps wanting to the full CBC Chem panel at $185!) plus pills & pill pockets really add up fast. I keep wondering if I would have been better off doing the iodine treatment. I guess we won't know. He could live 1 more day or 8 more years... but I had to make the decision based on "most likely."

If the cat only has thyroid issues though, and everything else is good - that iodine treatment is awesome and breaks even really fast with meds/blood tests.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your story pp. I'm trying not to put the cart before the horse, I am so stressed at the idea of the multiple vet visits, prescriptions etc.