My cats health question

[lair94]

Hello,

I’m not sure if anyone can help me with my curiosity in regards to whether or not I took the right course of action with my cat.

7 months ago my 13 year old cat seemed to be getting unwell. I took her to the vet and they found nothing wrong after doing an X-ray and blood work. The only test that wasn’t completed was a urine test.

Now 4 months ago, my cat had lost half her body weight from 9 pounds to 4/5 pounds. I brought her to the vet again with the following symptoms (coughing wheezing and shortness of breath with her head extended forward). An X-ray showed a spot on her lungs and the vet said that it could’ve been either two things, cancer or asthma. He then said that the treatment was the same for both outcomes. The treatment was prednisolone. This treatment helped her gain her weight back and not cough or wheez as often. Once I ran out of the prednisolone, she then started to get worse. I had the vet renew the prescription and she got better again. Until a month ago, she started to get green snot forming around her nose. I suspected that she had an infection. Due to financial restraints, I did not take her back to the vet and she passed away this weekend. I was devastated, I just lost one of my best friends who was around for half of my life

I’m looking for comfort in knowing that I did the right thing. The one thing that bothers me is that even though I suspected that she had an infection. I continued her treatment, I feel as though this was a big mistake as steroids can help the infection.

 

[fionasmom]

Welcome to The Cat Site although I am sorry that the loss of your pet has brought you here. It seems that you tried the best your could to help your cat. She was approaching 14 and you no doubt gave her a good life as your companion. If aggressive treatment had been suggested at that age, there is no guarantee that she would have survived it. If she had cancer, the prognosis was not good no matter what you did and the pred did keep her comfortable and even helped her to gain weight. She clearly felt better once you had started that for her and you need to give yourself credit for that. If she had an infection, could she have fought it off? That is not a certainty.

If this was lung cancer, a couple of things may have happened. Primary lung tumors are rare, which means that it had already spread from another part of her body. That does not mean that you missed anything as cancers can be insidious and unnoticeable at the beginning. If it was a primary lung tumor, the chances of it spreading are as high as 90% in cats. While I am certainly not able to say anything for certain, I wonder more if she did have lung cancer vs asthma given your description and that would have meant almost certainly palliative care, which is what you gave her. She had probably gone on for as long as she could with your care.

 

[lair94]

Thanks Fiona, I appreciate you taking the time to assess what I went through and it does give me some comfort knowing that I did all that I could.

 

[denice]

I think this was probably cancer. A steroid will slow the progress for a time but eventually the cancer overtakes what the steroid can do.

 

[lair94]

This was my cat