Side Effects…?

 It's a morning ritual now, since starting the chemo. The dogs go out, before I even have coffee, and Toby sits by the door in the kitchen, waiting for me to come back in and feed him. The good stuff we bought, not what all the other cats eat (prescription “c/d”, due to one cat having crystals in her urine.)  No, he gets canned food with a gravy center and cat treats he absolutely loves.

Up to this week, Toby has been eating well.  It’s been about five weeks since his diagnosis and starting chemo (Palladia). Once he got a taste for the good stuff, he never looked back at the c/d. Our fifteen year old cat, Honey, has been losing weight so she has been put on canned “a/d” cat food (high in fat) to add some pounds back on. So Toby gets a bit of that also. Anything to keep him eating and keep his weight up – 13 pounds at the start of all this.

You see, Toby isn’t eating as much as he did this time last week, and what he does eat sometimes doesn’t stay down long… So a quick call to the oncologist’s staff and a new medicine to calm his stomach should help him eat — and keep it down.

Along with the new medicine, we’ll be giving him a break from the chemo — just a few days. He’ll enjoy the break. I know we will also, not having to force a pill down his throat for a day or two.

In a couple of weeks we’ll have him back in the vet’s exam room, going through blood and urine tests, looking for any signs of organ impacts as a side effect of Palladia. Low white cell count, proteins in the urine, vomiting and diarrhea… We’re crossing our fingers and toes he’s reacting well to the chemo and he can be on it for a while. For my part, I keep checking the lymph nodes. Are they stable?  No shrinkage it seems, but are they not growing? I’m reserving my layman’s opinion until the qualified oncologist tells me what exactly is happening.

In the meantime, Toby likes me checking his neck, loudly purring and occasionally drooling. Yes, for such a dignified cat, he just can’t help himself. I don’t mind… much.

In the meantime, the holidays are coming right up and I’ll have two weeks to spend more time with him. He doesn’t mind my working long hours each day  — he usually just makes himself at home in front of the monitors on my desk, chewing on my sticky notes covering it, and occasionally walking away with one on his fur somewhere. But two weeks with no work distractions; we’ll both love it!

 Follow up: not long after talking to the Oncology assistant, we discovered Toby had a massive hairball (sorry, I know — TMI.) It appears that was the main cause of his not wanting to eat. We picked up the new medicine but did not give it to him — yet. He resumed eating well on his own and has not slowed down since he got that off his stomach, so to speak… We resumed his chemo schedule and keep enjoying every day with him.

Thanks for reading!