IBD and possible lymphoma, my cat is crashing

Peaceandcats

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Oh no, I am sorry....what pill did he get? Was it the pred? Is he still getting transdermal gaba? He really sounded like he had a great day with grooming himself and making pudding instead of soup. This may be a temporary setback. I don't think one pill pocket would make him regress, but in his frail state, I suppose it is possible. Hang in there....we are all here for you.
 

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if you are worried about the pill pockets you can try empty gelatin caps. I used ‘em fine for awhile, size three. The vet can get them for you, you stick them in there, then coat them w/ tasty cat food, and he’ll eat them. But since the pill pockets didn’t seems to be making my cat’s IBD flare up, I switched to those…so much easier. I still think pudding is a lot better than soup. That happened w/ me as well until quite suddenly one day, he was solid again! I celebrated! It can take time. Bodies take awhile to adjust to things.
 
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Oh no, I am sorry....what pill did he get? Was it the pred? Is he still getting transdermal gaba? He really sounded like he had a great day with grooming himself and making pudding instead of soup. This may be a temporary setback. I don't think one pill pocket would make him regress, but in his frail state, I suppose it is possible. Hang in there....we are all here for you.
Yep, it was the pred in the pill pocket. I did it again last night and it seemed to be OK this time. If he doesn't get tired of the flavor, this was an effortless method for both of us!

if you are worried about the pill pockets you can try empty gelatin caps. I used ‘em fine for awhile, size three. The vet can get them for you, you stick them in there, then coat them w/ tasty cat food, and he’ll eat them. But since the pill pockets didn’t seems to be making my cat’s IBD flare up, I switched to those…so much easier. I still think pudding is a lot better than soup. That happened w/ me as well until quite suddenly one day, he was solid again! I celebrated! It can take time. Bodies take awhile to adjust to things.
OK, yep, I do have some empty capsules, but a bit smaller than size 3 (maybe 4's). I think what I'm going to do is fill some with the S. Boulardii and coat it in some of the hills A/D food this weekend. Just need to remind myself not to heat the food up because it makes it too watery and he doesn't 'lap up' the pill with it. It just slides away. I thought that heating it up out of the fridge would help the aroma for him but the flavor appears to be real good that it doesn't matter.

I think for now, the initial panic from last month is starting to sub-side. At times he looks OK. I'm trying to leave my tension outside the home. (Save my yelling and frustration for the car or at work. ha ha). I think I noticed he is a little bit more calm lately since he hasn't gone to the vet for a few days. His next follow up is Feb 22 so he has a good few weeks to relax.

The bummer is I still get up in the middle of the night to check on him and clean his litter boxes since he still goes more than normal. I don't want him stepping in and tracking that stuff around.

*Personal gut feeling* - I still think that Hydrolyzed food for a week messed him up and it's hard to recover. It's funny how it might work for some but I've been reading stories around the internet of this causing big diarrhea problems. Might go to the store this weekend and find some quality rabbit/duck/venison food if I can find a dry version because the current gastrointestinal food isn't doing it. (I'm at the office all day and he needs something to graze on). I think his current food is chicken based going by the 'chicken by-product' ingredient there.
 
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BellaBlue82

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Yep, it was the pred in the pill pocket. I did it again last night and it seemed to be OK this time. If he doesn't get tired of the flavor, this was an effortless method for both of us!



OK, yep, I do have some empty capsules, but a bit smaller than size 3 (maybe 4's). I think what I'm going to do is fill some with the S. Boulardii and coat it in some of the hills A/D food this weekend. Just need to remind myself not to heat the food up because it makes it too watery and he doesn't 'lap up' the pill with it. It just slides away. I thought that heating it up out of the fridge would help the aroma for him but the flavor appears to be real good that it doesn't matter.

I think for now, the initial panic from last month is starting to sub-side. At times he looks OK. I'm trying to leave my tension outside the home. (Save my yelling and frustration for the car or at work. ha ha). I think I noticed he is a little bit more calm lately since he hasn't gone to the vet for a few days. His next follow up is Feb 22 so he has a good few weeks to relax.

The bummer is I still get up in the middle of the night to check on him and clean his litter boxes since he still goes more than normal. I don't want him stepping in and tracking that stuff around.

*Personal gut feeling* - I still think that Hydrolyzed food for a week messed him up and it's hard to recover. It's funny how it might work for some but I've been reading stories around the internet of this causing big diarrhea problems. Might go to the store this weekend and find some quality rabbit/duck/venison food if I can find a dry version because the current gastrointestinal food isn't doing it. (I'm at the office all day and he needs something to graze on). I think his current food is chicken based going by the 'chicken by-product' ingredient there.
I understand, we also tried the hydrolyzed food with Nico. He hated it. 😔 He did approve of Rawz, which is single protein limited ingredient wet food. Nico loved their duck pate. There are some sites that sell it online, but if you go to their website they list stores near you that are authorized carriers of their food. It's very high quality.
 
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Well, I received confirmation this afternoon that his cell test came back positive as lymphoma :( I was trying to prepare for it as I had a feeling with the enlarged lymph nodes.... but I'm still devastated no matter which way you dice it.

We have an appointment on Tuesday with the oncologist doctor at the ER to talk about the chemo pill and devise a plan. I hope my buddy can be one of the kitties that can stabalize for a few years. Please........
 

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Well, I received confirmation this afternoon that his cell test came back positive as lymphoma :( I was trying to prepare for it as I had a feeling with the enlarged lymph nodes.... but I'm still devastated no matter which way you dice it.

We have an appointment on Tuesday with the oncologist doctor at the ER to talk about the chemo pill and devise a plan. I hope my buddy can be one of the kitties that can stabalize for a few years. Please........
I'm so sorry to hear this news. I know many kitties can stabilize with chemo, so I'm hoping for the best as well. Hang in there. ❤
 

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Well, I received confirmation this afternoon that his cell test came back positive as lymphoma :( I was trying to prepare for it as I had a feeling with the enlarged lymph nodes.... but I'm still devastated no matter which way you dice it.

We have an appointment on Tuesday with the oncologist doctor at the ER to talk about the chemo pill and devise a plan. I hope my buddy can be one of the kitties that can stabalize for a few years. Please........
I am so sorry to hear this. You have been through so much and I know you were hoping for better news. Hopefully, you will get to spend a few more good years together. My heart goes out to you. :hugs: Please stay in touch and let us know how it goes.
 
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Ocean Planet

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I will. Thanks to everyone who as followed and made suggestions the whole way. You are appreciated from here. For now I think I have a plan. I'm not giving up now.

If things continue to work I'll give his pred and chemo pill via pill pocket

I tried S. Bouldardii tonight in a capsule with Hills A/D food but he still manages to leave the pill behind every time. So i mixed the powder directly with the A/D food and he ate it finally. whew..... good first dose in.

Will post updates as things happen. Come on Bouldardii... work for us this weekend....
 

Peaceandcats

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I am sorry to hear this news, but encouraged by these responses, especially Margot Lane's....kitties can indeed persevere during and after chemo. He also has youth on his side which will help. We are here for both of you, every step of the way!
 
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Thank you. It's tough. I think he is hanging in OK but he is not the cat I had before. I miss his playfulness. All he does now is sleep. I'm scared the chemo pill will make his stomach upset after he has been eating so good and will have to add a whole new host of meds to keep it all in check. I mean, I might be making more problems in my head that haven't happened yet... I know.

I want him to live for as many years as possible, but I hope it's not as a medicated zombie where we both stress on popping pills daily. Then there is the stress of the more frequent vet visits which surely takes days off their life-span. I'll just have to monitor once we dive in a little more. I spend all my free time with my 2 kitties now.

On a possible positive note, I think the S Boulardii has helped. He was going to the bathroom 5-7 times per day. Friday he went 6 times, Saturday he went 3 and so far, I don't believe he has gone today at all. I'm going to cut back on the dose until I see what he does and just maintain from here. I don't know if it will still be pudding or not.

The stress from this situation has caused me to lose 5 pounds. I lose my appetite since I'm sick to my stomach all the time. Man :(
 
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Margot Lane

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I was scared of the chemo pill as well, but my vet said: “Cats tolerate it surprisingly well.” I would not have believed it but they do! He might be a little bit sleepier on chemo pill days, but otherwise OK. I’m glad I did it—- hope it helps you. (You’ll get instructions for handling the pill if you haven’t already: I use gloves, was my hands, keep a special pair of scissors just for opening the packet). Sounds like a lot but really, it isn’t, esp. your cats gets to live and live well. ❤
 
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Ocean Planet

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I was scared of the chemo pill as well, but my vet said: “Cats tolerate it surprisingly well.” I would not have believed it but they do! He might be a little bit sleepier on chemo pill days, but otherwise OK. I’m glad I did it—- hope it helps you. (You’ll get instructions for handling the pill if you haven’t already: I ise gloves, was my hands, keep a special pairs of scissors just for opening the packet). Sounds like a lot but really, it isn’t, esp. your cats gets to live and live well. ❤
Awesome. I'd love to have similar results! I've been reading all about it this afternoon. I like that you can get them as flavored treats from Wedgewood if necessary too. I'd wonder if he takes it well if we can back the pred down. Thats one of my questions for Tuesday. 5mg a day now. Would 2.5mg be OK in the future kind of thing. Thanks for replying with your experience :)
 

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I stopped receiving the notifications but I think I caught up. For the A/D pill trick, I pack any pills or powders into capsules. The A/D, I take a spoonful and microwave that for two second. Flip it. And microwave for another two seconds. That’s simply to take the chill off. As you noted, longer than that and it gets too thin to work with. The other thing I do is I drop the A/D dipped capsules on the carpet. This makes it a lot harder for her to simply lick the food off. She has learned to scoop and swallow. And she doesn’t get her meal until she’s scooped and swallowed all her capsules. She has become a pro at this. It took us awhile though. When we started, it was sometimes several times per capsule before she would swallow them. Now she hardly ever needs more than one try.
 

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Oh no. I hadn’t caught up. Sorry to hear about lymphoma. For Krista, I got the chemo formulated as an ultra concentrated flavored oil. Krista liked salmon oil and fish oil. So I got it compounded 10X dose in an anchovy flavor. I only needed to give 0.1 mL which I mixed with an equally small amount of fish or salmon oil. In all, she only had to lick up about a nickel-sized oil puddle twice a week. It was no trouble for her. Then I’d give her her breakfast for that day.
 
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Oh no. I hadn’t caught up. Sorry to hear about lymphoma. For Krista, I got the chemo formulated as an ultra concentrated flavored oil. Krista liked salmon oil and fish oil. So I got it compounded 10X dose in an anchovy flavor. I only needed to give 0.1 mL which I mixed with an equally small amount of fish or salmon oil. In all, she only had to lick up about a nickel-sized oil puddle twice a week. It was no trouble for her. Then I’d give her her breakfast for that day.
No problem. I'll discuss everything with the oncologist Tuesday. I'd assume we are in the 'earlier' stage based on the time frame of when he started to go downhill. At least that is my non medical thought anyway.

He finally went to the bathroom for the first time Sunday and it was soft logs with shape!!! No runny water/pudding! I owe it to you and the S. Boulardii. We hit it pretty hard over the weekend and it worked! Thanks daftcat75 daftcat75 , from me and my kitty. For once he didn't meow going to the litter box. Should we continue a maintenance dose for a while longer? I'm afraid to stop. ha ha. I'll do it for life if I need to. I can actually sleep without cleaning the litter box all night.
 

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No problem. I'll discuss everything with the oncologist Tuesday. I'd assume we are in the 'earlier' stage based on the time frame of when he started to go downhill. At least that is my non medical thought anyway.

He finally went to the bathroom for the first time Sunday and it was soft logs with shape!!! No runny water/pudding! I owe it to you and the S. Boulardii. We hit it pretty hard over the weekend and it worked! Thanks daftcat75 daftcat75 , from me and my kitty. For once he didn't meow going to the litter box. Should we continue a maintenance dose for a while longer? I'm afraid to stop. ha ha. I'll do it for life if I need to. I can actually sleep without cleaning the litter box all night.
SB is safe enough to give it twice a day at a maintenance dose (125 mg or 2.5 CFU e.g. half a Jarrow capsule) indefinitely. The only caveat is that it can be constipating at higher doses. If that becomes a concern, try reducing how much SB he gets. I bought a capsule filling machine off Etsy. I'd link to it here, but the redirects never resolve. Simply search for seller MYHERBAR. Once a month, I turn a dozen Jarrow capsules into 50 sized four capsules. It takes about 20 minutes. Betty gets 1 size four capsule (about 1/4 Jarrow capsule) twice a day. She has shown no interest in the taste of SB like Krista did. So capsules are good for her. She had a dental exam and extractions the other week. Doc sent me home with about five days' worth of liquid buprenorphine. Although that stuff doesn't really have a taste, she mostly hated the violation of it. I told her many times over those five days, "If I could pack this in a capsule for you, I would." We were both relieved when we had used it up.
 
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OK, update time. Despite the situation, a good update.

We met with the Oncologist today. Great appointment. Talked for 40 minutes. Didn't feel rushed. I was impressed with the whole office staff. He confirmed that he has the smaller cell version and not large cell lymphoma, if there is any good to be found I guess.

They said he looked great. Gained weight back. Was 10.9 last month and back up to 11.9. Thats the pred talking. He went to the bathroom this morning and his stool was 100% normal. Wouldn't even question it! That's the S. Boulardii talking. They did a blood panel and said it looked great. All organ values looked really good.

Basically the overview is this:

The prednisolone brought him back into the "you wouldn't know he is sick phase" despite being a little more tired than normal. He said pred by itself obviously won't keep lymphoma at bay long-term and I would be looking at symptoms again in 2-3 months. Chlorambucil is pretty much a necessity if I want to keep him around for years as opposed to months. The doctor said if it was his cat he would absolutely go this route since he has responded well to the pred and he is still middle-age (7.5).

I told him I was concerned that he is such a scared and anxious kitty I didn't want to have to drag him to vet appointments often because that would wear on him and hurt my relationship with him. So the plan is to give a Chlorambucil dose once every two weeks and come in for a blood panel every 4 weeks. OK. I can do that. Should be a good compromise so we both keep our sanity. So we signed up. Just waiting on the pills to be delivered. Supposed to be mini pills that I can hopefully fit in a pill pocket.

I'm still nervous & scard about this whole thing but I read mostly really good outcomes going this route. Sometimes I come across stories that it made their kitties worse. The Dr. said their are some other chemo drugs to try if that happens. I worry about the nausea but a lot of times I read that goes away in a couple days with a spread out dose. They gave me some cerenia tablets. I think I may try to give him half a tablet about an hour before the Chlorambucil and cross my fingers. That sound like a good approach to those who've done this?

At his next appointment in 4 weeks, if he has responded well, they plan to back the prednisolone down and let the Chlorambucil do the heavy lifting.

Current daily regimen -
5mg predinsolone
1/2 capsule of S. Boulardii

Current issues -
less playful
sleeps in weird places sometimes

I'll keep the updates going in hopes this helps someone else in the future. God knows I've scoured the internet for days looking for answers and ideas and 'whys' with this whole process.
 
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Chemo doesn't knock cats over like it does with people. I saw Krista sleep just a little more on dosing days and that was it. Her appetite wasn't affected.

Cerenia is more effective if it is given consistently. However, since he's not vomiting, you probably don't need to give it daily. If you wanted to give it ahead of the chemo, I would give it the night before. It's a 24 hour medicine so you can be certain it will be working when he takes the chemo.

Cerenia can actually make some cats inappetent. You may want to try a Cerenia dose without the chemo first to see if he's one of those cats. If that's the case, ondansetron is an effective alternative that doesn't seem to negatively affect appetite like Cerenia can.

I had chlorambucil compounded into a concentrated flavored oil. Krista loved fish so I had it compounded into a 10X strength anchovy flavored oil. I had it 10X concentrated so that she would have less oil to lap up to get her dose. Instead of a whole mL, she only needed a 0.1 mL dose (every three days) or a 0.2 mL dose when the doc finally allowed us to go to every two weeks. To that small amount of oil, I added an equally small amount of fish oil or salmon oil. Every few days she got to lick up an oil puddle about the size of a nickel. She gave me no grief about it, and I gave her her breakfast directly after it. I never had a problem with her skipping a meal when she was on chemo.
 

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Hello all,

I needed a supportive place again to air out my situation with my current kitty. He is a 7 year old bengal. I've had two other bengals who lived long lives and one had IBD as well. Apparently the breed is very well known for the issue. I never knew this! Over the course of 2022 he battled back and forth with diarrhea. It became more frequent towards the end of the year and sometimes had a drop of blood at the end at times. Growing concerned I started taking him in for tests. Simple ones at first. For example, took a stool sample to rule out parasites. Xrays to make sure nothing was in there that shouldn't be. Next came an ultrasound which show some thickening of his GI tract and enlarged lymph nodes. So IBD and possible lymphoma. Great.

To find out definitely I took him to get an endoscopy to get some biopsies taken. The procedure went very well and the Dr. saw no red flags like ulcers or tumors. Well, just got some results back Wednesday and they 100% confirm IBD and lymphoma is possibly in the early stages. They are going to run a stain on his sample to confirm for sure and should know in a couple weeks.

That is the background. But the issue is the Drs wanted me to try to move him to a high protein diet. He doesn't like wet food so he was on Royal Canin dry food gastrointestinal. They recommended I move him over to the Hydrolyzed high protein version. OK, so I started adding the new food a little bit this past Friday and got it up to about 70% new and 30% old. He liked the new food. The problem is on Monday, his stool got loose and by that evening and Tuesday it was total liquid. He tried to go 5-6 times each day. Wednesday I had a panic attack. That morning he went to the litter box 15 times within a couple hours! It was all just a drop or two at that point. So I took him to the place where he had the endoscopy and they gave him fluids, a cerenia injection for upset stomach and since we knew the results of the biopsy, a prednisolone injection. He came home and ate/drank great until 10am Thursday. Now he has stopped eating and drinking again and has gone to the litter box about 8 times today. His stool is still pure liquid and drops.

I'm legit scared that he keeps crashing. He is laying in my closet lifeless again. I don't know if it's this damn food or what! I know the food takes weeks to know if it works but I'm wondering if this is the cause of him want to go to the bathroom constantly?? I'll probably have to go back to the hospital Friday if he doesn't eat or drink by morning... I'm gonna try to get some sleep first.

Should I nix the food? Two different vets think I should stay on track with it. He has had two days of prednisolone but these problems started before that. The food is the only thing different.

Thanks for reading, I'm so tired and terrified. A fella shouldn't cry as much as I have the last 2 weeks :(
I tried hydrolyzed food for Quinn I think or Merlin I have forgotten… but whoever it is was it gave them very bad diarrhea and I returned it… it was from a website and it was very expensive. So I would guess it’s probably the food. I would stop that and try to switch him slowly to a home-cooked or a raw diet maybe.

I hope your kitty does not have lymphoma. My wizard had IBD and then lymphoma and crf. He was FIV plus but he still lived until 21 pr so. It was the lymphoma that got him at the end. I tried every diet with him but he had a very sensitive stomach he could not eat raw food and for some reason I didn’t get the hang of making the home-cooked food at that time. Wizard took pred and chlorambucil for it. Which helped at first but then he crashed after a c rebound.
 
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