Wednesday Sickcat Blogging

Well, in short, not as bad as they feared, not as good as they hoped.

She's got small cell lymphoma, it seems. It's limited to her intestinal tract, which they assure me is good, and it was, they say, most likely caused by a year-old case of inflammatory bowel disease which we never did anything about.

Small cell lymphoma appears to be reasonably treatable, she'll be taking prednisone and some other chemo drug probably for the rest of her life, but that's not a bad thing because at least it means she could have a couple or more years to really learn to hate me properly. And I'm good with that. They tell me she's probably not in pain from it, and that it could kill her tomorrow or in a few years or she could die of something else completely unrelated in a few years. Well, true, and so could we all. So I'm inclined to just go day by day with this, and be glad she's with us now and every day we get with her.

The prednisone will also treat the IBD, and the way we know it's not working is appetite or weight loss. So we'll keep an eye on that. It's hard to tell how much she's eating, actually. If she doesn't show much interest in something, I open another can. She's got six plates scattered around the house at this point, and one in here with me because she seems like she prefers to eat in my company. She'll come and meow plaintively at me until I follow her into the kitchen thinking she wants different food, at which point she will settle down and start eating what's already there with no apparent displeasure. But if I leave the kitchen, she'll leave the food and follow me. So I'm spending some time in the kitchen reading, and in here on the computer with a plate by my desk.

My partner points out that there's really no way we could have known what was going on a year ago, since there were obvious behavioral reasons for her to have stopped eating, her only abnormal blood test went back to normal quickly with treatment, and even with it advanced as far as it has the only way we actually knew what was going on was for them to cut her open and take samples for testing. "If they'd said they needed to open her up a year ago, would you have agreed to it even though she was feeling better and her tests were normal and there was a very small chance there was actually something to find?"

Well, when you put it that way... But I still feel guilty for assuming she was just being more neurotic than usual when she was actually in pain and really sick. I feel awful for letting her get even sicker. And I feel pretty bad, too, that as mean as I'm being to her right now she still loves me and is following me around, probably because she wants me to make it all better. (I'm familiar with this. When the clusters get bad, I follow my partner around in hopes there's some magical way to make it all better. This is not rational, but what the hell else is there to try?)

On the other hand, the doctor tells me he was afraid after the surgery that it was carcinoma, in which case we wouldn't be talking about treatment options at all. So this is not good, but it's not as bad as it could be either. If she doesn't respond to the pills, we can try injections, or other drugs, or whatever, but he seems to think the pills might actually help and there's no statistical evidence the injections work better than or worse than the pills. And, really, it's a forty minute drive to the clinic with a cat who hates cars twice a week and, you know, my partner's got a job. and I do not drive. So hopefully the pills will work. We'll figure something out if we have to, but with any luck this will work the easy way.

Meanwhile, I've been folding my fingers raw and am wondering what the hell I'm going to do with a thousand cranes dedicated to my cat. You get a wish for each thousand cranes, and I personally don't make wishes, so none of the cranes I send out are "used up", I guess. (Look, I'm pagan. We're superstitious by nature, okay?) But these will be, and it seems reasonable anyway to find something appropriate to do with them since they're for Cypress but honestly she doesn't want more than a couple to chew on.

So the cat clinic may find itself in possession of a very large box of litter that's too pretty to throw away and what they'll do with it I have no idea. There are six doctors and assorted clinicians and tech people and staff, so presumably they could kind of let everybody have a more reasonable amount. They're pretty, but mostly in small doses. A thousand, while traditional, is overwhelming as a gift. Plus my partner is still genuinely baffled at the whole crane thing and gets annoyed when I need help mailing or delivering them. Should be fun, anyway, and anyone who's got some decent ideas what to do with a bunch of used cranes (many with teethmarks and cat drool), please feel free to share that in the comments.

The important take-away message here, though, is that she'll possibly be okay, but at least she's okay for now, and I don't have to feel like the next time we talk to them they're going to need to put her down. My thanks to all of you for the good wishes, and I'm sure if she knew you she'd be perfectly happy to include you in the long list of people she hates as well... but in a good way.