Lisa,
We have had experience with this, and I am glad we pursued it (even
though it ended up costing us about 1k to get a diagnosis) so that I
(and my vet) can share our experience with other stinky lovers.
We adopted an old guy, Cocoa, when he was about 6. He was going
adrenal, had a stomach sphincter problem that made him gag or vomit if
you over-excited him, and he had a benign osteoma on his head. As you
can see, we like to adopt the under-dogs that don't have much chance
of going home with other families.
About last October, we noticed that Cocoa's eyes had started to bulge
out of his head and his third eye was showing all the time. We took him
to the vet and did x-rays of his osteoma, as we thought it might have
started to grow inward and was causing pressure in the skull. This was
not the case as far as we could tell.
Therefore, we took him to our local vet school, which has a lot of
expensive equipment and can diagnose most things in small animals for a
very expensive price =P. They did ultra sounds and all sorts of scans,
but could not determine the cause. Therefore, the ophthalmology team
(yes, they have an ophthalmology team just for small animals there,
hehe) came over and looked at him. They said they needed aspirates from
behind his eyes. They snuck a very small needle into the inner corner
of his eyes and sucked up the cells from behind them. The diagnosis was
lymphoma, and the tumor was in his brain (well, at least one of them
was).
He was started on a chemo dose of pred (which was 0.35 mL of a 5 mg/mL
solution, once per day according to his ~ 2lb body weight) and
chlorambucil (0.85 mg once a day, compounded by our local pharmacy to
chicken flavor). He also got one dose of Elspar (dramatically shrinks
many tumors and can "turn back the clock" a little bit, buy some time),
which is probably not a viable option for those who don't have vet
schools or huge small animal clinics nearby (but I can't be sure). It's
a human drug, and I am told it costs about 1k per vial (and you must
buy the entire vial). The vial goes bad 24 hours after opening, so you
must be ready to go in at a moment's notice if there is an open vial
waiting for your stinky. We got lucky and someone at our vet school
purchased a vial for their cat. They sold us a dose from the left-overs
for Cocoa for only 30$. Within a month or two, his eyes had completely
gone back into his head (at the time of diagnosis, they were bulging
out so badly that our vet feared they may actually come out of his
skull, and we would have to put him down or remove his eyes if
something didn't change, what a decision to have to make, hmm?).
We managed to get another 4 months with him, which was amazing
considering the location of the tumor. However, I do believe we could
have bought more time if we had stopped the oral chlorambucil once his
eyes were back in his head. Ultimately, we had to euthanize him in
January because his liver was starting to fail, and he was no longer
eating nor having any sort of quality of life. I do wish we had stopped
the chlorambucil sooner and just relied on the pred, but this was our
first trial with lymphoma (and my vet had never used chlorambucil,
before), so we just had to sort of try it and see.
Anyway, I hope all of this info is useful for you. If he already has a
confirmed case of lymphoma, it could be that the cancer has
metastasized to the brain. If you notice his eyes are bulging, that
would be pretty much exactly the same case we dealt with. I would see
if you can find a place that can do aspirates behind the eyes for a
diagnosis. If he isn't already on pred, I'd get him on that. If he's
already on pred, perhaps see if you can get him on chlorambucil at
least until the eyes "go down" and the third eye functions normally? I
would also talk to your vet about Elspar and see if that is a viable
option for you.
Good luck, your little guy is in my thoughts.
--
Rachael Harrison
Doctoral Candidate
Physiology and Functional Genomics
College of Medicine
University of Florida
(352) 392-9236
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[Posted in FML 5902]
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