(no subject)
So here's what's been going on with our little furry terrorist... if you've got experience with cats and could offer any advice, I'd appreciate your two cents on this.
The fundamental question being, is my vet a moron?
So here's his history. The cat showed up at my sister's August of last year, skin and bones, and she assumed he'd been a stray for awhile (probably not too long as he's neutered, declawed and very good with people) and was starving. He was a really picky eater, couldn't manage to use the litterbox, and had really terrible diarrhea. She couldn't give him the attention he needed (what with three other pets, two children, and a career with a long commute), so we took him in. We found food that he liked and started to work on the litterbox issue, which took about six months to (more or less) resolve.
He proved to have a voracious appetite, usually eating about six times a day, but he stayed skinny as a rail and still had diarrhea. We consulted a vet and sent him through a couple rounds of antibiotics. Finally, this past summer, sick of any random person who happened by telling me that there was clearly something horribly wrong with him, we took him in and after about $300 worth of tests, all they knew was that he had a high white cell count but that all of his organs were fine. (And his metabolism is slow. Meaning he should be the size of a house, as much as he eats.) They gave him a super-strong antibiotic; the diarrhea cleared up and he put on about a pound and a half, and we thought, great.
Once in awhile, however, he'd go through periods of not having an appetite, usually just for a day or two. Which, you know, sometimes cats are just jerks that way, and the vet does think he's probably 10 or 12 years old. But since he doesn't really have any extra fat to sustain him, when he hit day three of not wanting to eat last week, we decided to have them look at him again.
So we take him in and it's not the vet they told us we'd have on the phone. It's this other guy, who I am trying to take seriously even though he keeps calling our male cat "she" and also I have sweaters older than this kid, and he does what they always do: takes one look at his skinny ass and go "OMG CANCER!!1eleventy." And we're like no, his appetite is usually fine and he has been this skinny forever. So they run more tests and his white count is down into the normal range but his red cell count is low and the kid just scratches his head and goes "yeah, so this doesn't make any sense. But we don't know what it is, therefore: cancer!" I'm thinking, what is this, an episode of House? And he's trying to sound sympathetic or professional or something but I swear he sounds for all the world like one of my students trying to explain why he didn't bring his homework in.
And we're like, so what you're saying is that this cat has been living with lymphoma, untreated, with no symptoms other than low weight and occasional, temporary loss of appetite, for sixteen months. That is some weak-ass lymphoma, right there.
And he's like "yeah, your cat will be dead soon but here's some steroids that might keep him around for a bit but probably not."
So since we've gotten him home he's been going back and forth between being fine and then they'll be periods of a few hours where he's looking like he's at death's door, shallow breathing, glassy-eyed, unable to walk. And it just wrecked us seeing him like that because we're sitting there thinking he's only got a few hours left, but then he'd pop up and be fine again, a little under the weather but more or less his old self. So finally I'm like, y'know, I was on prednisone for a week and it fucked me up something fierce, let's look up the side effects in cats. None of which the vet mentioned when he prescribed it, by the way, because I think he just assumed the cat would be dead in a couple of days and it didn't matter. And one of them is fucking muscle weakness, so, yeah, maybe that's why sometimes he's super-weak and lethargic. And maybe I've been bursting into intermittent tears about the forthcoming demise of my cat for nothing, or, I don't know.
Thoughts?