Polly has a tumour in her mouth

[Leah&Polly]

It's been awhile since Polly and I checked in. Polly's level have been the best they have ever been and she only needs 1 unit of Lantus daily. In late October, I noticed that Polly was tilting her head as she ate and figured she had another tooth-ache of some sort. She has had a few visits to the vet for dental surgery, most recently in April. I looked in her mouth and saw this growth between her two front fangs where the little teeth should be. (See attached picture). I had my vet take a look and after consulting with a few other vets, it was determined it is a cancerous tumour. My vet thinks it's pretty aggressive and even if we removed the growth hanging out, it would grow back unless they also removed part of her jawbone.

The problem is that Polly's love of food has been severly affected. She loved her FancyFeast pates mushed with water. Now, she seems to avoid her wet food and when she does lick a bit of it, it's difficult for her to swallow or eat without it all over her chin. She has no trouble with her Temptation Treats or her dry grain free "GO" kibble which I used to limited with her diabetic diet. Currently the food she consistently can eat is raw chicken breast which I cut into bite size pieces for her. I think it is because it slides down her throat easily. I've also added some tuna water/juice to give her some extra variety. I've also started to give her some milk/cream to get her calorie intake higher. Nothing is upsetting her stomach so far. I've tried a variety of new canned foods and also tried sardines and she wouldn't even look at them!

Although she has lost weight, she is still silly and adorable Polly. I think she is getting enough to eat, mostly chicken, but looking for some other ideas for what else to feed her. Not sure how much longer she'll be around, but want to give her all the goodies I can to keep her nourished. If anyone has gone through this, I'd like to hear your thoughts/ideas.

Thanks

 

[PeterDevonMocha]

aww ... No experience here, just wanted to say I'm sorry you guys are going through this .. hopefully someone here might have experience with this ....

 

[Hope + (((Baby)))GA]

Did they do a needle biopsy of that growth? Guess I would want it confirmed and not just by the way it looks. Reason being I had a young cat once that had a major thing on her lower gum.......absolutely nothing in the room she could have gotten into but vet said it looked she had pierced it with something. Took about 3 weeks to slowly go down and vanish and during that time I used baby rice cereal mixed with a whole can of baby meat........easy for her to lick it up because she wasn't eating.

 

[BJM]

Based on the location, it may have impacted her ability to smell well. For now, focusing on getting adequate food and water in her will be key to keep her stable. All the tips posted for inappetance on this board - Parmesan cheese sprinkles, FortiFlora, heating to make it smellier, mincing or pureeing to make it easier to swallow, syring assisted feeding, etc.

In the absence of biopsy and imaging, it would be difficult to confirm a diagnosis, so it may look like cancer ... and not be cancer.

There are some things which impact the disease course from this point:
growth rate - how fast is this growing? If it is growing fast, any surgical intervention should be done sooner, to slow it down, if it can't be completely removed.
size of tumor - this will affect any surgical options and apply whether or not the growth is malignant
invasiveness - does imaging show clear edges to the tumor, or does it bleed into neighboring structures. The latter would be more suggestive of cancer.
metastasis - is there evidence of spread elsewhere in the body based on bloodwork and imaging, and lymph node evaluation.

Think about what you are able and willing to do. (More than 1 may apply)
Make her comfortable as long as possible.
Debulk the tumor (remove part of it to make it easier to eat). This also could provide a decent biopsy specimen at the same time. Yes it might regrow (even if benign). And there would be a recovery period. It could enable her to eat more easily.
Chemotherapy if it is cancer.
Radiation if it is cancer.

This is a really tough process to go through. Take it 1 step at a time.

{hugs}

 

[Leah&Polly]

Thanks for all of your insight/suggestions.I greatly appreciate your support.

I have a vet who comes to the house as getting Polly to the vet is too stressful for her and I. We haven't done any needle biopsy or x-rays. We tried a 2 week injectible antibiotic to make sure it wasn't just an infection and to see if it would go down at all. The tumour is very hard and the vet said that you couldn't just cut it off and stitch it. It would have to be cauterized. The recovery from that alone would make it even harder for her to eat. The vet saw her in September for her routine check up and about 45 days later-she has this growth which illustrates how fast this growth came about. Since the picture was taken, it has grown about 1/3 bigger to the point where it is pushing those little teeth up top forward, her nostril is smaller on one side from the protrusion of the growth. As was mentioned in one of the posts, the growth is likely affecting her smell.

Polly is about 15 years old. I got her as a street cat and so don't wish to put her through any surgery/chemo. I am choosing to make her as comfortable and give her whatever she will eat. I will look at some of the suggestions posted for picky eaters. I'm off to a pet store that has a wholistic naturapath for pets to see if she has some supplements to help with Polly. Will keep you all posted. Thanks again for your insight.