![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fr_defenestrato[Disclosure: most text re-purposed from an email to mom & bro.]
So my cat Tynchre (not pictured) has cancer of the face. By the end of winter he had something growing in his ear that I took to be an abscess of some sort... but I had not established a new doc for him since moving to Hyattsville, so found one online, close to my home: Langley Animal Hospital, whose doc said, "Oh, that's not an abscess, that's a tumor" and immediately admitted Tynchre for surgery the next day.
After that first surgery (March 23), the biopsy of the tumor came back saying that while "the vast majority of feline cutaneous mast cell tumors are benign... no reliable grading scale has been devised for feline patients"... meaning that even with the biopsy they weren't sure absolutely whether the cancer was benign or malignant. Which I find pretty hard to believe. In any case, "Complete excision of these lesions is generally curative. Unfortunately for Tynchre, neoplastic cells extend to the margins examined in this biopsy and local recurrence would therefore be expected."
Local recurrence indeed. The poor boy has a nasty polyp-looking tumor growing right where the old one was excised (inside his left ear); and another, bigger one growing outside and under the same ear. The size of the external one makes me think it must have been present as of March when I took him to Langley Animal Hospital, and they didn't catch it. Add to this fact the apparent borderline incompetence of the admin staff at Langley and some very scary customer reviews online about the cleanliness of the place, and so...
I took him to a new vet yesterday (Lynn Animal Hospital, with far better online customer reviews) and am awaiting a follow-up call from Dr. Freed, who promised to call before he knocked off work today. However, the doc that examined Tynchre brought in a senior colleague to have a look as well, and even the senior colleague said he would have to recommend a specialist for surgery given the location of the present tumors. For one thing (he said he said he said) the external one runs pretty much where be also nerves that control the left-side facial muscles... and the internal one is trickily close to the ear canal. In order to have any confidence that excision of neoplastic cells will be complete, the surgeon needs to go "several millimeters deeper" than the visible edge of the tumor; and therein lies the problem. Tynchre could end up with facial paralysis and/or hearing loss... and still not be guaranteed of non-recurrence.
In the unlikely event the cancer is malignant, appropriate treatment with any hopes of cure would run upwards of $10K. That would be a very hard sum to cover, and again, no guarantee of being effective.
So... fuck. I will consider a surgical option—exactly one more surgery—if and only if a specialist assures me it's benign and there's a good chance s/he can achieve "complete excision of these lesions" and prevent recurrence. If not, I expect I will simply not treat Tynchre until his health or quality of life noticeably declines, and then will have him put down.
Yesterday was not a happy day. Today's kinda sucking, too.
So my cat Tynchre (not pictured) has cancer of the face. By the end of winter he had something growing in his ear that I took to be an abscess of some sort... but I had not established a new doc for him since moving to Hyattsville, so found one online, close to my home: Langley Animal Hospital, whose doc said, "Oh, that's not an abscess, that's a tumor" and immediately admitted Tynchre for surgery the next day.
After that first surgery (March 23), the biopsy of the tumor came back saying that while "the vast majority of feline cutaneous mast cell tumors are benign... no reliable grading scale has been devised for feline patients"... meaning that even with the biopsy they weren't sure absolutely whether the cancer was benign or malignant. Which I find pretty hard to believe. In any case, "Complete excision of these lesions is generally curative. Unfortunately for Tynchre, neoplastic cells extend to the margins examined in this biopsy and local recurrence would therefore be expected."
Local recurrence indeed. The poor boy has a nasty polyp-looking tumor growing right where the old one was excised (inside his left ear); and another, bigger one growing outside and under the same ear. The size of the external one makes me think it must have been present as of March when I took him to Langley Animal Hospital, and they didn't catch it. Add to this fact the apparent borderline incompetence of the admin staff at Langley and some very scary customer reviews online about the cleanliness of the place, and so...
I took him to a new vet yesterday (Lynn Animal Hospital, with far better online customer reviews) and am awaiting a follow-up call from Dr. Freed, who promised to call before he knocked off work today. However, the doc that examined Tynchre brought in a senior colleague to have a look as well, and even the senior colleague said he would have to recommend a specialist for surgery given the location of the present tumors. For one thing (he said he said he said) the external one runs pretty much where be also nerves that control the left-side facial muscles... and the internal one is trickily close to the ear canal. In order to have any confidence that excision of neoplastic cells will be complete, the surgeon needs to go "several millimeters deeper" than the visible edge of the tumor; and therein lies the problem. Tynchre could end up with facial paralysis and/or hearing loss... and still not be guaranteed of non-recurrence.
In the unlikely event the cancer is malignant, appropriate treatment with any hopes of cure would run upwards of $10K. That would be a very hard sum to cover, and again, no guarantee of being effective.
So... fuck. I will consider a surgical option—exactly one more surgery—if and only if a specialist assures me it's benign and there's a good chance s/he can achieve "complete excision of these lesions" and prevent recurrence. If not, I expect I will simply not treat Tynchre until his health or quality of life noticeably declines, and then will have him put down.
Yesterday was not a happy day. Today's kinda sucking, too.
