Back again after a year. Any advice?

KLD

KLD

Member Since 2024
Hi all,

My 5-year-old cat has been in remission for almost a year now. However, back in April we noticed a mysterious condition on his tongue. It was biopsied because we were concerned for cancer, but while it turned out not to be cancer, we’re actually still not sure what it is. At first we thought it was an eosinophilic granuloma, an autoimmune condition he has due to a chicken allergy. He started back on steroids beginning of May. Thankfully, because he was now no longer overweight and eating only low carb, his blood sugar remained stable and normal.

The bump on his tongue did not respond terribly strongly to the steroids, so we eventually weaned him off by October and ruled out eosinophilic granuloma.

Unfortunately, the bump came back with a vengeance. 5 weeks ago he went back on steroids, plus an antibiotic. The bump continues to remain a mystery, but has been responding MUCH better to this combo. Tomorrow he goes back to the vet for another check up to decide if he will need a referral to a surgeon.

All that being said, I have noticed the past couple of days he has been acting off—clingy, extreme hunger (even taking into account the steroid hunger), and he’s been drinking a bit more than usual. I tested his blood sugar and it’s 13.1 on the Freestyle Lite. 10 days ago it was within normal range, so this is recent. I’m not surprised by this. I’ve been struggling with his weight slowly increasing since he went back on steroids, and I think that is playing a large part of why he got diabetes again.

I’m just wondering if anyone has any advice, or anything I should take into consideration before his appointment tomorrow? He obviously needs to be weaned off the steroids, but he had a good run. I’m just hoping this won’t set back our progress with the mystery bump too much.
 
I have a cat with EGC. It erupts in her lower lip and inside her lip. Up until now I change her food and it goes away. She ate a few stray pieces of her sister’s chicken and now it is back! I’ve run out of new food. Can you take a picture? My vet was able to scrape one and look under the microscope to diagnose. What did the biopsy show? Sorry you are experiencing this.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KLD
tiffmaxee said:
I have a cat with EGC. It erupts in her lower lip and inside her lip. Up until now I change her food and it goes away. She ate a few stray pieces of her sister’s chicken and now it is back! I’ve run out of new food. Can you take a picture? My vet was able to scrape one and look under the microscope to diagnose. What did the biopsy show? Sorry you are experiencing this.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Emmett definitely has EGC. He gets them on his lips and paws. His is also a reaction to chicken. He’s down to having maybe two or three different foods he’s able and willing to eat. Such a pain.

When we noticed the bump on his tongue, we thought it might be EGC, but he had it biopsied, and the biopsy actually didn’t show the bump to be EG. The biopsy results were actually pretty inconclusive, so we don’t really know what it is. It basically just showed that there is inflammation and necrotic tissue. A combo of steroids plus antibiotics so far has been the best treatment to get the bump down, but the bump always reaches a point where no treatment is able to make any further improvement.

He’s actually going in to a specialist next week to get it looked at/treated. Now that I’ve had to lower his steroid dose, I’m worried the bump is just going to grow back again. We needed to put him back on the steroids so we could get the bump small enough to even be surgically removed—it wraps under his tongue and was too big to even consider removing.

The good news is that his blood sugar is back down to normal levels with the lower steroid dose.

I’m so ready for this nightmare to be over.
 
You are lucky if just chicken is a trigger. I’ve run out of novel protein to try as Mocha reacts to them all after awhile and she got ahold of some chicken last week. I am hoping it goes away and bison will work for her. I feed her separately but when I let her back in she rushed to get any crumbs of chicken and she erupted . Her sister doesn’t care for bison so I can’t feed both the same. Good luck with the specialist.
 
tiffmaxee said:
You are lucky if just chicken is a trigger. I’ve run out of novel protein to try as Mocha reacts to them all after awhile and she got ahold of some chicken last week. I am hoping it goes away and bison will work for her. I feed her separately but when I let her back in she rushed to get any crumbs of chicken and she erupted . Her sister doesn’t care for bison so I can’t feed both the same. Good luck with the specialist.
Click to expand...
Thank you! I’m hoping they will be able to help. A couple other places either said they didn’t think they would be able to help, or were shutting down their oral surgery unit. So I’m having to travel 2 hours.

Oh no, what a nightmare. I’ve only noticed Emmett reacting to chicken. Unfortunately some of his safe foods recently reformulated to add in chicken… guess how I found that one out.

My other cat has also now been told to avoid chicken because of digestive issues. He LOVES chicken, so this has been a lot harder. Emmett doesn’t like chicken to begin with. Rabbit is safe for both of them, and a favourite. Too bad it’s so expensive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top