Smokey update…again

took the big guy back to the vet this morning. he had his ultrasound & aspiration on Monday, which showed the extent of the tumor. The cytology was inconclusive, but that means it’s not likely lymphoma, which shows up in a very clear way. Next option would have been to see the kitty oncologist/surgeon, for removal of the tumor and/or chemo. As of this morning, though, don’t think he would survive that. He had 3 ‘episodes’ last evening, followed by three during the night, and one more this morning. He gets all hunched over as if he can’t breathe, drools like a Mastiff, and then runs around like a caged animal for the next ten minutes, back and forth, alternately scratching his neck, biting his back, licking his legs, and back again to the scratching. In this morning’s episode, he went back and forth from one water dish to the other for no obvious reason. And all the while this is going on, he’s meowing bloody murder.

Based on my description of his behavior, the vet suspects that Smokey’s having seizures. But because of the concern that he looked like he wasn’t breathing a few times, she did another x-ray. Fluid is building up in his chest cavity, because of the compression due to the tumor. His lungs don’t appear to have fluid in them, but the space for the right lung, especially, is being squashed. There was a visible difference in lung size and fluid from the first x-ray, which was only a couple of weeks ago. Between the possible seizures and the fluid build-up, it’s either not likely that he’d survive/recover from surgery well, and, more importantly, that it would be fair to put him through all that. He’s been through a lot and been a very good patient. This morning, he howled the whole way up to the vet, but as soon as we were inside he shut up. He knew where he was, he’s been there so much lately. He watched everything that went on and kept trying to jump off the table so he could go check things out! He’s a curious one!

But it may be almost over for him. The vet’s keeping him for the day, in hopes he’ll have another episode so she can determine if he is indeed having seizures or if it’s something else. We’ll keep all you (3?) readers posted.