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- Apr 21, 2022
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Ok so I found this entire site from a very frustrating search about anything and everything about a treatment my vet and I are going to try for my Honey kitty.
- Also I am sorry in advance that this is so very long of a post I'm also working out my feelings towards the diagnosis since we only just got the biopsy results a few days ago.
I'll continue working with my vet as closely as I can and I basically have her on speed dial with e-mails but the current issue is most of her best guesses are 'the person who sent the biopsy report suggested this may help' and 'I am not sure because the only clinical trial was so very small we have basically no real data'
I told her that I'd found a forum with a very few people who've had experience in using this for cats and she was very supportive of trying to learn as much as I can because she doesn't really know much either. She's been wonderful and she's doing her best to learn with me but she's been frustrated at the lack of ... anything really. There are so few trials, or even people who've used it and then talked about the results that I feel like we're flying blind here but I'm not giving up on my baby girl yet so learning as much as possible can help me know what questions to pass along for her to research to advise me as we go.
So back when my Honey first came indoors she had a slightly odd wound but there were a lot of things going on and the original advice was to just let it heal. Of course being a cat she kept irritating it and I was going through a lot right then and didn't stay as on top of it as I wish I did. Slightly later she came down with very bad peritonitis and that overrode basically everything. I remember asking about the neck scab since she kept scratching it back open so it couldn't heal right and they didn't have much advice.
I almost lost her from the teeth issues so I unfortunately let myself get distracted just dealing with that, and then letting her recover. They had to take out like 8 teeth at once but she recovered beautifully and I was able to keep her going just long enough that they could do it. (Unfortunately covid and severe winter storms as well as the holidays caused huge delays with their ability to get her in and those few weeks of extra waiting were almost too much. I had to syringe feed her criticare just to get her to make it to that appointment so I know rationally why I didn't focus on her neck, but the guilt as her petparent makes me feel like I should have found more spoons to push for them to do more then.
Fast forward a few months and she finally healed up but there were still concerns about her neck and also her nose. Which I'd tried to talk to a tech at one point and the advice was to just watch it in case it grows.
Check up time and I tried again to see what we could do for her neck so her other vet (I ended up seeing multiple different people so it was also hard to rehash everything all over again to new people and worry that I was forgetting stuff) and she suggested either antibiotics or steroids to try and clear it up.
Some things happened and we didn't go through with the steroids right away. Which might have been a good thing since we didn't know what we were dealing with but they were just trying various things to see if they could help things resolve.
Anyways after a nail clipping session we discovered that she also had a strange scab on one pawpad that had gotten agitated. So I rushed her in worried. Different vet ended up being able to get me in and we started all over from scratch - Antibiotics which helped at first, then she plateaued, and there was a scheduling issue that meant that she didn't get right in for another dose immediately. (My vet actually apologized and said if I had spoken up and said something they could have squeezed her in because it was so time sensitive but I hadn't realized at the time - I just figured that they have the appointments they have you know?) She'd also been more inclined to advise that -It's worrying that it's not healing but she wasn't immediately worried and felt like we had time to try the topical treatments to see if it responded.
So after realizing we were back to square one and being utterly frustrated I asked again about options for figuring out what we were dealing with that were less invasive. I still don't know if there were more options that we could have tried but my vet was worried that scrapings might be too easily contaminated and a good solid biopsy would be for the best.
Funds have been a huge issue in this partly because she was an unplanned cat, but mostly because of the pandemic. When I brought her in I was in a really good financial place, and she was quite honestly a few days from inviting herself inside with or without her shots. I got a huge order right as it was getting cold (and she was literally starting to hound the door and try and sneak in to follow us since she'd decided I was her person by that point) and I just went for it.
Of course being an outdoor cat she has a ton of health issues, and I feel guilty every time I can't manage more but I'm glad at least that I can do what I can and will keep doing every single scrap of care that I can offer and afford. Now that events are happening more I plan to work my butt off through the rest of the summer but I am very very scared it won't be enough.
That's part of why my vet was more inclined to push the imiquimod as a treatment option vs finding an oncologist (if I could even get an open appointment apparently they're horribly booked up right now) but I also want to know all my options. Also because she's got lesions in multiple areas but otherwise seems pretty ok.
Right now I know so little and my main plan has always been that if what she has is untreatable I'll give her palliative care and just keep her happy for as long as we have together.
We only did the biopsy on her neck because I was worried that if it WAS something that wasn't going to be treatable that I didn't cause a bunch of pain that would ruin whatever time she has left. I'm glad I did because it was almost all my energy keeping her from scratching and licking her neck - I'm not entirely sure how I would have kept her from multiple open problem spots all simultaneously.
The biopsy came back that it's papilloma induced SCC. And I kindof blanked a bit as she was explaining some of it. She's going to forward all of the results to me so I can look over them with a clearer head.
I posted in the bowen's disease thread because that's the closest I could see to people having used imiquimod, but I wasn't sure if it having changed to SCC would change things? Or maybe someone has different advice or experiences.
My other worries now: Since she absolutely has/had a papillomavirus at some point how contagious could that be? Could I have unknowingly spread the virus to the kittens? They don't live together, Honey stays downstairs and the kittens live upstairs but I go back and forth between the levels constantly and had tried to introduce them to each other towards the beginning - I can't find anything on how infectious Papillomavirus is between cats other than 'it's infectious' and direct contact. And don't worry it doesn't cross species. Or info about dogs.
Vet had no answers but I did ask her to try and look into it for me.
It's a good thing it never worked out to combine the households so to speak but I'm worried those few nose touches or just me going back and forth might be enough to have to worry about going through all of this again with my other two babies and I've been an absolute wreck.
Honey used to be the neighborhood punching bag so she just absolutely doesn't want to tolerate other cats - eventually I gave up and just keep them in their separate bubbles where they're happier, but I'm so anxious about germs now that I've been second guessing everything all the time. I tried my best to chase off the other cats when they tried picking on her, but I know now that she is a teeny, spayed, former housecat so I'm not surprised the other cats in the neighborhood wanted her out of their territory.
She stayed stubborn until the day I could bring her in - she did NOT want to lose her space, but I remember at least two distinct incidents - one giant tomcat chasing her up and down all the neighborhood yards right around when she first showed up and was still pretty semi-feral, and then one after she felt comfortable here where this calico tried to rush *through* me to get at her and nothing I did would dissuade the other cat. Eventually they both ran off and she showed up 15 minutes later hunkered down right by the house.
I was so happy the day I finally was able to bring her in (after getting her a full checkup and her shots) and was prepared for an absolute monster of a cat who had no idea how to behave indoors because outside she was all over everything, but the second she came in and really remembered what this indoors thing was she just went back to this absolute model housecat. No jumping on furniture - I had to actually reassure her for a month once summer hit and it was open window time to get her to feel comfortable sitting in the window and she'd have all these odd habits like she was worried I'd yell at her for jumping up on stuff.
She's better now and she realized that she could go on the couch because she was determined to come sit on me but it took her 6 months before she even tried (once) to jump on my dad's chair. Really wondering if she'd been dumped or something because that's just so odd behavior for a cat. Especially one who had no problem being on top of everything and anything.
She has learned that she's absolutely allowed do get on stuff if she wants and she'll never be reprimanded for it, and that yes she is a good kitty but it took a long time. And I know that it wasn't something from us since it was a day one thing - and no one in our house ever had or would yell at her for being a cat or doing cat things.
This ended up turning into a let me tell you about my Honey kitty thread and less about the Imiquimod but for sure rambling is helping me right now so thank you for your patience in reading through these tangents.
After so many wrong turns I don't want to make the wrong decision here with her. I know she's old - I knew going into this that she probably had a host of medical problems having been an outdoor stray and with God knows what of a health history. I've already spent thousands and I don't even know what I'm doing - I just know I don't want to make her go through countless surgeries if they might not actually give her a good quality of life, but I do want to give her every gentle second I can because she deserves it.
If pictures will help I can post some of where we're at but I'm not sure how to spoiler things yet and don't want to post lesions without being able to make them opt in.
- Also I am sorry in advance that this is so very long of a post I'm also working out my feelings towards the diagnosis since we only just got the biopsy results a few days ago.
I'll continue working with my vet as closely as I can and I basically have her on speed dial with e-mails but the current issue is most of her best guesses are 'the person who sent the biopsy report suggested this may help' and 'I am not sure because the only clinical trial was so very small we have basically no real data'
I told her that I'd found a forum with a very few people who've had experience in using this for cats and she was very supportive of trying to learn as much as I can because she doesn't really know much either. She's been wonderful and she's doing her best to learn with me but she's been frustrated at the lack of ... anything really. There are so few trials, or even people who've used it and then talked about the results that I feel like we're flying blind here but I'm not giving up on my baby girl yet so learning as much as possible can help me know what questions to pass along for her to research to advise me as we go.
So back when my Honey first came indoors she had a slightly odd wound but there were a lot of things going on and the original advice was to just let it heal. Of course being a cat she kept irritating it and I was going through a lot right then and didn't stay as on top of it as I wish I did. Slightly later she came down with very bad peritonitis and that overrode basically everything. I remember asking about the neck scab since she kept scratching it back open so it couldn't heal right and they didn't have much advice.
I almost lost her from the teeth issues so I unfortunately let myself get distracted just dealing with that, and then letting her recover. They had to take out like 8 teeth at once but she recovered beautifully and I was able to keep her going just long enough that they could do it. (Unfortunately covid and severe winter storms as well as the holidays caused huge delays with their ability to get her in and those few weeks of extra waiting were almost too much. I had to syringe feed her criticare just to get her to make it to that appointment so I know rationally why I didn't focus on her neck, but the guilt as her petparent makes me feel like I should have found more spoons to push for them to do more then.
Fast forward a few months and she finally healed up but there were still concerns about her neck and also her nose. Which I'd tried to talk to a tech at one point and the advice was to just watch it in case it grows.
Check up time and I tried again to see what we could do for her neck so her other vet (I ended up seeing multiple different people so it was also hard to rehash everything all over again to new people and worry that I was forgetting stuff) and she suggested either antibiotics or steroids to try and clear it up.
Some things happened and we didn't go through with the steroids right away. Which might have been a good thing since we didn't know what we were dealing with but they were just trying various things to see if they could help things resolve.
Anyways after a nail clipping session we discovered that she also had a strange scab on one pawpad that had gotten agitated. So I rushed her in worried. Different vet ended up being able to get me in and we started all over from scratch - Antibiotics which helped at first, then she plateaued, and there was a scheduling issue that meant that she didn't get right in for another dose immediately. (My vet actually apologized and said if I had spoken up and said something they could have squeezed her in because it was so time sensitive but I hadn't realized at the time - I just figured that they have the appointments they have you know?) She'd also been more inclined to advise that -It's worrying that it's not healing but she wasn't immediately worried and felt like we had time to try the topical treatments to see if it responded.
So after realizing we were back to square one and being utterly frustrated I asked again about options for figuring out what we were dealing with that were less invasive. I still don't know if there were more options that we could have tried but my vet was worried that scrapings might be too easily contaminated and a good solid biopsy would be for the best.
Funds have been a huge issue in this partly because she was an unplanned cat, but mostly because of the pandemic. When I brought her in I was in a really good financial place, and she was quite honestly a few days from inviting herself inside with or without her shots. I got a huge order right as it was getting cold (and she was literally starting to hound the door and try and sneak in to follow us since she'd decided I was her person by that point) and I just went for it.
Of course being an outdoor cat she has a ton of health issues, and I feel guilty every time I can't manage more but I'm glad at least that I can do what I can and will keep doing every single scrap of care that I can offer and afford. Now that events are happening more I plan to work my butt off through the rest of the summer but I am very very scared it won't be enough.
That's part of why my vet was more inclined to push the imiquimod as a treatment option vs finding an oncologist (if I could even get an open appointment apparently they're horribly booked up right now) but I also want to know all my options. Also because she's got lesions in multiple areas but otherwise seems pretty ok.
Right now I know so little and my main plan has always been that if what she has is untreatable I'll give her palliative care and just keep her happy for as long as we have together.
We only did the biopsy on her neck because I was worried that if it WAS something that wasn't going to be treatable that I didn't cause a bunch of pain that would ruin whatever time she has left. I'm glad I did because it was almost all my energy keeping her from scratching and licking her neck - I'm not entirely sure how I would have kept her from multiple open problem spots all simultaneously.
The biopsy came back that it's papilloma induced SCC. And I kindof blanked a bit as she was explaining some of it. She's going to forward all of the results to me so I can look over them with a clearer head.
I posted in the bowen's disease thread because that's the closest I could see to people having used imiquimod, but I wasn't sure if it having changed to SCC would change things? Or maybe someone has different advice or experiences.
My other worries now: Since she absolutely has/had a papillomavirus at some point how contagious could that be? Could I have unknowingly spread the virus to the kittens? They don't live together, Honey stays downstairs and the kittens live upstairs but I go back and forth between the levels constantly and had tried to introduce them to each other towards the beginning - I can't find anything on how infectious Papillomavirus is between cats other than 'it's infectious' and direct contact. And don't worry it doesn't cross species. Or info about dogs.
Vet had no answers but I did ask her to try and look into it for me.
It's a good thing it never worked out to combine the households so to speak but I'm worried those few nose touches or just me going back and forth might be enough to have to worry about going through all of this again with my other two babies and I've been an absolute wreck.
Honey used to be the neighborhood punching bag so she just absolutely doesn't want to tolerate other cats - eventually I gave up and just keep them in their separate bubbles where they're happier, but I'm so anxious about germs now that I've been second guessing everything all the time. I tried my best to chase off the other cats when they tried picking on her, but I know now that she is a teeny, spayed, former housecat so I'm not surprised the other cats in the neighborhood wanted her out of their territory.
She stayed stubborn until the day I could bring her in - she did NOT want to lose her space, but I remember at least two distinct incidents - one giant tomcat chasing her up and down all the neighborhood yards right around when she first showed up and was still pretty semi-feral, and then one after she felt comfortable here where this calico tried to rush *through* me to get at her and nothing I did would dissuade the other cat. Eventually they both ran off and she showed up 15 minutes later hunkered down right by the house.
I was so happy the day I finally was able to bring her in (after getting her a full checkup and her shots) and was prepared for an absolute monster of a cat who had no idea how to behave indoors because outside she was all over everything, but the second she came in and really remembered what this indoors thing was she just went back to this absolute model housecat. No jumping on furniture - I had to actually reassure her for a month once summer hit and it was open window time to get her to feel comfortable sitting in the window and she'd have all these odd habits like she was worried I'd yell at her for jumping up on stuff.
She's better now and she realized that she could go on the couch because she was determined to come sit on me but it took her 6 months before she even tried (once) to jump on my dad's chair. Really wondering if she'd been dumped or something because that's just so odd behavior for a cat. Especially one who had no problem being on top of everything and anything.
She has learned that she's absolutely allowed do get on stuff if she wants and she'll never be reprimanded for it, and that yes she is a good kitty but it took a long time. And I know that it wasn't something from us since it was a day one thing - and no one in our house ever had or would yell at her for being a cat or doing cat things.
This ended up turning into a let me tell you about my Honey kitty thread and less about the Imiquimod but for sure rambling is helping me right now so thank you for your patience in reading through these tangents.
After so many wrong turns I don't want to make the wrong decision here with her. I know she's old - I knew going into this that she probably had a host of medical problems having been an outdoor stray and with God knows what of a health history. I've already spent thousands and I don't even know what I'm doing - I just know I don't want to make her go through countless surgeries if they might not actually give her a good quality of life, but I do want to give her every gentle second I can because she deserves it.
If pictures will help I can post some of where we're at but I'm not sure how to spoiler things yet and don't want to post lesions without being able to make them opt in.