8:20am September 8, 2014

Finally, a diagnosis.

Wanted to post this earlier, but didn’t have the emotional energy for it.

So my housemate brought our cat to the specialty treatment clinic for another aspiration a few days ago, and finally, FINALLY, one of the tests they ran found lymphoma cells.

My housemate said that she was actually strangely relieved, to go from “well, your cat has all the SIGNS of lymphoma but we can’t find any actual cells from it” to a diagnosis with a known treatment that they can put her on right away.

She spent the night at the hospital while they got her stabilized, because she’d been having trouble breathing again (although the prednisone helped a lot with shrinking her lymph nodes). Her current planned treatment is to get a prednisolone pill every day, to keep the lymph node swelling under control, and to go into the clinic once a week for a shot of chemotherapy.

Again, to reiterate some of the things I mentioned way back in my first post: Lymphoma is one of the most treatable feline cancers. There have been a lot of treatment advances made in recent years. My housemate joined a support mailing list about feline lymphoma, and there are people saying their cats in treatment are doing really well, and some people with cats who have been in remission for years. Our cat is still eating well, which is a good sign, and I really like the attitude of the people at the clinic. And ironically, the treatment itself is probably going to be less expensive than all the tests they ran up till this point trying to find the cause of her illness.

But the bills for the tests have run into the thousands of dollars already, the treatment does still cost money, I’ve used savings account money I didn’t want to have to use, and I’d really, really appreciate any money that anyone could possibly donate to us. We actually have another fundraising idea that I’ll go into detail about in my next post, but the long and the short of it, for now, is that while we can afford the treatment, all the tests have put us out several thousand dollars and anything you can give to help with that, even just a little bit of money, would be really appreciated. The GoFundMe link we’ve set up is here, or you can use PayPal to donate money to inasha AT karitas DOT net.

(Also, I wish I didn’t have to mention this, but don’t anyone say one damn word about chemotherapy for cats being silly, frivolous, a waste of money, or a “rich white people thing.” My housemate lived in poverty for twenty years before moving in with me and is mixed-race. And although we’re no longer technically living below the poverty line, we’re hardly affluent. The reason we are doing everything we can to save our cat now is because WE CAN AFFORD TO DO SO, even if doing so puts us in a precarious financial position. She has a very deep emotional bond with Meimei and I’ve been paying out of my own savings to see that they can keep that bond with each other for as long as possible. It’s every bit as important and beneficial to her as her connections with the important humans in her life. Medical care and treatment for the animals we humans deeply love and bond with should be a right, not a privilege, and bonding with animals is not some kind of “luxury” that only very privileged people do to be trendy and feel enlightened; it’s as old as humanity itself. So anyone who even makes one comment in the direction of that BS, I’m just gonna apply the ban stick to them, no questions asked.)