Laura and Quincy
Member Since 2009
Hi everyone,
Thank you everyone for heeding my desperate pleas yesterday morning and sharing your input!
Yesterday's post: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30219
To answer a few of the questions posed, Quincy typically eats mini-meals about 3-4 hours apart. He has had a very recent teeth cleaning (early June) and blood and urine analysis done in mid October. Everything from the October lab work was WNL except for aforementioned e. coli-caused bladder infection. But... now I think something may have been up with him this week because yesterday afternoon, i came home to discover diarrhea in and out of the litter box, and this morning Quincy threw up. So maybe something is up with his GI system that caused his BG to spike/distressed his pancreas.
I've updated Quincy's spreadsheet, and have included his recent BG numbers here:
11/17, ~5:30pm: 133
11/17, ~10pm: 125
11/20, 5:30am: 200
11/20, ~5:30pm: 130
11/21. 9:30am: 127
11/21, 6:30pm: 97 !
11/22: 5~5:30am: 102 !
I'm wondering if my spot checks caught something acute that was really bugging Quincy. I was shocked and dismayed by the 200 number! Quincy's highest BG number was always his 5:30am AMPS/AMBG measure, so while i was surprised by the value, I wasn't surprised to see it drop for the next BG measure. After getting his teeth cleaned and getting rid of the bladder infection, i was expecting some really good BG numbers in the green. I think the numbers from the weekend show that Quincy's pancreas is definitely working. Hopefully he'll back down to being under 100 most of the time. I'm feeding him mainly boiled chicken breasts now - just trying to make it easier on his GI tract.
To bring those who remember Quincy up to speed, he was diagnosed with small cell GI-based lymphoma in April 2008. So he's been on leukeran for 2 1/2 years now. He was on predisone for a while too, but went off it soon after his daibetes diagnosis.
Quincy's had quite a summer. His May visit to the vet's went pretty well, so we decided to have his teeth cleaned when i brought my dog in for surgery. So, in early June he had his teeth cleaned, and the vet was pleased that the procedure went well. But a few weeks later, in late June I was petting Quincy while he was doing a kitty twist on his back, and I felt a lump on his belly, down by his back left leg. At first I thought it was matted fur, but quickly realized it was under his skin. It felt like a pea pod or endamame. I was immediately stressed and confused in part because Quincy had been at the vet's ~3 weeks prior to have his teeth cleaned, and neither my vet nor I noticed a lump. I monitored it for a few days, then reluctantly concluded it wasn't going anywhere and it needed to be checked. Long story short, after a fine needle aspiration suggested atypical cells, my vet basically rushed Quincy into surgery to get the lump out ASAP and find out exactly what it was. Since it was in his abdominal area (his "slack" as I call it), the vet was able to take out a good-size margin as well. I really wanted to minimize the number of surgeries he'd need, and the vet was of a similar mindset. Of course it turned out to be cancer - a peripheral nerve sheath cancer most likely. Fortunately it has a low probability of metastasizing; the big danger is a recurrence, and it'll just keep growing. But the vet did take out a big margin, and 4 months later, he's still lump free in that area, thank goodness. Knock wood!
That wasn't all though... in late August, Quincy started acting like he didn't feel that great - still ate well but sometimes had an unpleasant look on his face and was less cuddly. Also started vomiting more - like 10 times/month, usually clear liquid in the wee hours of the morning. I was concerned but hoping it had something to do with the fact that I adopted a new cat on Fri Aug 13 - a black kitty that was my friend's mom's cat until she died in June. (Even though I didn't know her, she knew about my cats, and that I had had a black cat, so before she died she told my friend she wanted me to take care of her kitty, whom she called Inky but I renamed to Jasper von Inky [Jasper for short]). Anyway... I was hoping the symptoms were due to the presence of the young whippersnapper. But when I brought Quincy in last month for his regular 3-month check up, the standard urine culture showed he had a bladder infection, and it was a nasty strain of E.coli resistant to many ABs. They had to do an extra sensitivity test to see what AB to use that might do the job.
Quincy handled the AB very well during the 2 weeks he was on it. And last Friday, 11/12, I got the good news that his re-check urine culture was clean - no sign of infection. Hooray! And as an unexpected benefit, Quincy's vomiting has diminished considerably and he seems very happy again. My vet and I now think perhaps he had some bad stomach bacteria, like heliobacter (which we found years ago when he was diagnosed with lymphoma), and the AB for his bladder infection cleaned that out too. . I am also giving him either a B-12 or B-complex shot every Sunday since he was a little low on B vitamins when we tested him in the spring.
So that's a bit of what Quincy has been up to since he went OTJ in March. I sure hope he stays OTJ for a long while!
Laura
Thank you everyone for heeding my desperate pleas yesterday morning and sharing your input!
Yesterday's post: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30219
To answer a few of the questions posed, Quincy typically eats mini-meals about 3-4 hours apart. He has had a very recent teeth cleaning (early June) and blood and urine analysis done in mid October. Everything from the October lab work was WNL except for aforementioned e. coli-caused bladder infection. But... now I think something may have been up with him this week because yesterday afternoon, i came home to discover diarrhea in and out of the litter box, and this morning Quincy threw up. So maybe something is up with his GI system that caused his BG to spike/distressed his pancreas.
I've updated Quincy's spreadsheet, and have included his recent BG numbers here:
11/17, ~5:30pm: 133
11/17, ~10pm: 125
11/20, 5:30am: 200
11/20, ~5:30pm: 130
11/21. 9:30am: 127
11/21, 6:30pm: 97 !
11/22: 5~5:30am: 102 !
I'm wondering if my spot checks caught something acute that was really bugging Quincy. I was shocked and dismayed by the 200 number! Quincy's highest BG number was always his 5:30am AMPS/AMBG measure, so while i was surprised by the value, I wasn't surprised to see it drop for the next BG measure. After getting his teeth cleaned and getting rid of the bladder infection, i was expecting some really good BG numbers in the green. I think the numbers from the weekend show that Quincy's pancreas is definitely working. Hopefully he'll back down to being under 100 most of the time. I'm feeding him mainly boiled chicken breasts now - just trying to make it easier on his GI tract.
To bring those who remember Quincy up to speed, he was diagnosed with small cell GI-based lymphoma in April 2008. So he's been on leukeran for 2 1/2 years now. He was on predisone for a while too, but went off it soon after his daibetes diagnosis.
Quincy's had quite a summer. His May visit to the vet's went pretty well, so we decided to have his teeth cleaned when i brought my dog in for surgery. So, in early June he had his teeth cleaned, and the vet was pleased that the procedure went well. But a few weeks later, in late June I was petting Quincy while he was doing a kitty twist on his back, and I felt a lump on his belly, down by his back left leg. At first I thought it was matted fur, but quickly realized it was under his skin. It felt like a pea pod or endamame. I was immediately stressed and confused in part because Quincy had been at the vet's ~3 weeks prior to have his teeth cleaned, and neither my vet nor I noticed a lump. I monitored it for a few days, then reluctantly concluded it wasn't going anywhere and it needed to be checked. Long story short, after a fine needle aspiration suggested atypical cells, my vet basically rushed Quincy into surgery to get the lump out ASAP and find out exactly what it was. Since it was in his abdominal area (his "slack" as I call it), the vet was able to take out a good-size margin as well. I really wanted to minimize the number of surgeries he'd need, and the vet was of a similar mindset. Of course it turned out to be cancer - a peripheral nerve sheath cancer most likely. Fortunately it has a low probability of metastasizing; the big danger is a recurrence, and it'll just keep growing. But the vet did take out a big margin, and 4 months later, he's still lump free in that area, thank goodness. Knock wood!
That wasn't all though... in late August, Quincy started acting like he didn't feel that great - still ate well but sometimes had an unpleasant look on his face and was less cuddly. Also started vomiting more - like 10 times/month, usually clear liquid in the wee hours of the morning. I was concerned but hoping it had something to do with the fact that I adopted a new cat on Fri Aug 13 - a black kitty that was my friend's mom's cat until she died in June. (Even though I didn't know her, she knew about my cats, and that I had had a black cat, so before she died she told my friend she wanted me to take care of her kitty, whom she called Inky but I renamed to Jasper von Inky [Jasper for short]). Anyway... I was hoping the symptoms were due to the presence of the young whippersnapper. But when I brought Quincy in last month for his regular 3-month check up, the standard urine culture showed he had a bladder infection, and it was a nasty strain of E.coli resistant to many ABs. They had to do an extra sensitivity test to see what AB to use that might do the job.
Quincy handled the AB very well during the 2 weeks he was on it. And last Friday, 11/12, I got the good news that his re-check urine culture was clean - no sign of infection. Hooray! And as an unexpected benefit, Quincy's vomiting has diminished considerably and he seems very happy again. My vet and I now think perhaps he had some bad stomach bacteria, like heliobacter (which we found years ago when he was diagnosed with lymphoma), and the AB for his bladder infection cleaned that out too. . I am also giving him either a B-12 or B-complex shot every Sunday since he was a little low on B vitamins when we tested him in the spring.
So that's a bit of what Quincy has been up to since he went OTJ in March. I sure hope he stays OTJ for a long while!
Laura
