Re: 9/17-18 punkin in twin falls now, ft collins tonight
bwahahahaha oh carolyn, that killed me! :lol: :lol: :lol: what a perfect caption for punkin!
we've arrived in Ft. Collins. oh, that is one long drive! it would've been a mistake to try to drive it alone with punkin.
they have been absolutely awesome in the car. like for HOURS they don't make a peep - either together under the driver's seat or anya under there and punkin moving about. we get out and switch drivers and they aren't even coming out anymore. punkin sat under my feet in the passenger's side for awhile - he's decided the way out must be under the driver's feet, but fortunately it's easy to keep him from going there. some cars there would be all sorts of ways to get there, but in the camry they have to go over the center console and over the driver's lap - so the co-pilot nabs him before he can get there.
anya's eating some - not much, but i think enough. however tonight she dutifully covered her bowl, punkin's bowl and the water bowl with washcloths! :lol: the hotel room has carpet, and as we all know, somehow canned cat food sprays bits all over the place when they eat. little crunchie bits everywhere. so i set all the bowls on washcloths. which she managed to work out from under the bowls and totally cover up the food and water. it looked like a restaurant table after you're done with dinner and the napkin's on your plate! silly kitter.
tomorrow morning we take punkin to the vet hospital at 9am for checking in and deciding an anesthesia plan. then they bring him back out to us and we meet the vet, Dr. Timian, and her student assistant at 10am. They'll do a CT scan and if he's doing ok with the anesthesia they'll do a MRI as well. i don't know when the echocardiogram happens.
jessica, he has acromegaly, which is a benign tumor growing on the pituitary gland. the tumor does a couple of things - for one, it is "pulsative" meaning that it turns on and off. It puts out chemicals that prevent the insulin from getting into the cells and doing its thing with the carbs. we keep giving more and more insulin so that enough gets in to keep him in decent numbers. at any point the tumor can shut down its production of hormones, so the dose has to be responsive to the cat's needs. so far we haven't had any "shutting off."
just fyi, the latest thing coming out of the researchers is a speculation that as many as 1 in 3 cats who end up with a larger than average dose might have acromegaly.
it also causes an increase in growth hormones, causing the cat's body to grow. the soft tissue grows first - so big feet, tongue, muzzle; the organs grow - megacolon, enlarged heart, liver, etc. and eventually even the bones will try to grow, like the forehead and jaw end up jutting out.
apparently pain is a part of all of this, although i don't think punkin's having any/much yet.
so what we're doing this week is called Stereotactic Radiotherapy - SRT - they aim concentrated radiation at the tumor, trying to avoid that optic chiasm. they'll make a mold of punkin's upper jaw so they can position him the same every time. Tuesday, wednesday & thursday he'll get about 20 minutes of radiation each day. small fractions, carefully targeted. the hard part of this entire thing is that he will be under general anesthetic 4 days in a row. he gets 1/2 dose of insulin in the morning and then we try to deal with the nausea and get him to eat in the evenings. no food after 10pm.
i brought the baby food, pepcid, high carb foods, karo, everything i could think we might need. i just hope he handles that anesthesia (wow i hate having to keep spelling that!) ok. that's the main concern i have.
Susan & Lanky did this just about exactly a year ago. Lanky's come way down in dosage since then. We're hopeful. even while i think i'm positively crazy to be doing it.
but sometimes the way opens up in front of you and you just keep going. this was one of those things. all the stars aligned and here we are. i'll open a new condo tomorrow so this doesn't get forever long!
