Callie Mae

[totallybeachin]

Hi everyone.
I haven't posted in a long time, but I wanted to come here to say, without all of you, I would never have learned how to regulate my baby and get her OTJ.
She is managing her diabetes fine,( she just tested 81 a few days ago :mrgreen: ) and has not had any problems in that department.
However,
I just found out yesterday she has cancer. She has a tumor a little smaller than an orange in her abdomen that is pushing her stomach up towards her spine. It has also spread into her lungs. The vet said she "maybe has a few months."
I am so sad by this, but I got to have her in my life for 9 years, and for that I am grateful.

I just wanted to share that with all of you because I know how you (we) all love our sugar babies like our children and I am grateful to all of you for your help with her diabetes.

If I would have known earlier, it's possible we could have removed the tumor, but because it has already spread to her lungs, they said there is not much that can be done but to try and make her comfortable.
I am to expect her to wither away as the tumor gets bigger causing her to eventually not want to eat because of the way her stomach is being pushed, and her breathing will get harder because of the cancer in her lungs that is spreading fast.

I hate knowing I have to literally watch her wither away and die. I can't stop crying.
Last night, I dumped the whole bowl of freeze dried salmon out for her to have! It's her ABSOLUTE favorite!

Again, thank you all for everything you do. You help so many people everyday, and you helped me.
Please keep us in your prayers.

 

[jt and trouble (GA)]

I ABSOLUTELY will keep you and Callie in my prayers. God bless
jeanne

 

[kse]

My prayers are with you and Callie Mae. I am so sorry to read this.

 

[Julia & Bandit (GA)]

I'm so sorry. Gabby passed away a little over a year ago from a stomach tumor as well. I know you're having regrets about not catching it soon enough to operate (I felt very guilty for a while for my choice not to pursue surgery, despite the fact that I knew it was logically the right choice), but stomach cancer does not have a good prognosis and even with surgery most pets pass away within 6 months. Gabby's abdominal tumor was about the same size, and my vet told me we had two, maybe 3 months left without surgery. She survived happily for 7 before it was time to let her go.

I chose to do palliative care with Gabby. It can be very time intensive, especially towards the end, so this is a very personal choice. I had to have my boyfriend and my brother help we with her feedings the last 2-3 months, or she never would have made it as long as she did. She really was a mostly happy kitty until the end of her life. One thing I printed out and was constantly looking at the whole time I did palliative care was this chart: http://www.pawspice.com/Feline Quality of Life Scale.pdf. It helped me a great deal assess when it was time to let her go.

So if you decide on palliative care, you will need to consider foods, medications, and feeding schedules. I would start out with high calorie foods while she still has a decent appetite. You want to keep as much weight on her as possible. Wellness kitten is an excellent food for this purpose. Wellness Chicken and Turkey are both also good, as are many of the EVO canned foods. Get a variety of these, because you'll need them. As her cancer progresses, she'll get pickier and pickier with foods and you'll need to rotate flavors alot. You'll have to dress up foods (like with the treat dust)to get her to eat. I used tuna, because she loved it. And you'll have to feed frequently--as the tumor gets bigger she'll eat less and less in one setting. When Gabby was diagnosed, we went to 6 feedings a day. As the cancer progressed, she wasn't even able to eat those tiny meals, so I would feed her, then bring the leftover food back to her an an hour, and so on until she finished her meal. The goal is to get a minimum number of calories in her every day, as well as you can. Towards the end, I was buying about 15 different cans of food at a time, and switching them up or mixing them together constantly to keep her eating. The big winners at the end when she would no longer eat the Wellness or EVO were novel and fishy food--BFF, Instinct Rabbit and Lamb, Natural Balance Venision, Blue Buffalo 95% duck, Before Grain Quail. Gabby wasn't diabetic, but most of the foods I got were low carb so that if she refused them I could still feed them to Bandit so they didn't go to waste. Because Callie is diabetic, you will want to stick to lower carb options to keep her diabetes under control as long as possible, so when choosing new foods you may need to read the ingredients for foods that aren't on binky's or the updated nutrition charts. Avoid anything with grains (rice, corn, soy, wheat), and things with vegetables as the first or second ingredient. Anything that's grain-free and doesn't have gravy is usually low carb.

If the cancer knocks her out of remission, don't be afraid to give insulin again. Or if she'll only eat something higher in carbs.

As things progressed, we gradually had to use more and more of an appetite stimulant to keep her eating. We used cyproheptadine. I had to be very creative getting her to take it, because she refused pill pockets in her final 3 months. I came up with alternatives though, like cheese with a tuna coating, half a pill pocket with a Purina Whisker lIckin's treat molded on top. Occasionally I had to use a pill gun to give it to her when she refused the "treat". This stressed her out alot so I tried to be creative enough to get her to take it on it's own.

You may also need a pain medication. We only used pain meds a couple times, because Gabby didn't seem to have a lot of pain. Towards the end, I was considering starting regular pain meds, but when we had exceeded the max dose of the Cypro and she still wouldn't eat enough calories to keep herself alive, I made the decision to let her go rather than try and assist feed her or watch her starve. Her tumor was taking up most of her stomach at that point, so I thought assist feeding would have not been a good quality of life situation for her.

I hope this advice helps, and if you have any questions or need any more advice or tips at all with palliative care for stomach cancer, please don't hesitate to PM me.