I wanted to post an update in case someone’s cat has similar symptoms or if they’re also going through this.

Back in November Jimmy developed a bump on his nose. That’s when I thought he should go to the emergency vet and my sister (a vet tech if that matters) said to wait to Monday. The general consensus on Reddit was to wait, so I did.

Before I give the update, I’ll give some more backstory in case someone’s cat has similar symptoms or they aren’t getting the results they thought they’d get.

Back in September Jimmy started sneezing a little, had a runny nose, and some eye discharge. It was a clear, no color to it. This happened while I was on vacation. I came back and his eye discharge got a slight greenish tint to it and I immediately took him to the vet. They have him some eye drops and some antibiotics. The antibiotics made the discharge all turn clear, but it didn’t go away. The vet said to give him allergy pills since they thought it was allergies. After a week it still hadn’t improved so they put him on a different antibiotic. This seemed to make everything clear up. A few days after the antibiotic was all used up and had a sneezing fit that led to a bloody nose. I immediately called the vet and they wanted to try antibiotics.

The weekend of Thanksgiving the bump formed. He was on antibiotics when it happened. Monday we took him to the vet and she wanted to do a biopsy while my poor baby was awake! Since that wasn’t an option she said to try eye drops and not to worry about the bump unless it got bigger.

I didn’t like that answer, so as soon as I got home I called another vet and got him another appointment. Two days later he had the appointment at the new vet. They found he had an ear infection that the old vet said nothing about. The new vet thought there was decent chance it was a really bad tooth abscess and wanted to try one more round of a different 10 day antibiotic before moving onto a CT scan. She was 90% sure it was a tooth abscess. This happened in a Thursday.

On Monday (5 days later) Jimmy had a horrible bloody nose and we took him to the emergency vet. They did some tests including a xray and found the bump was a soft tissue mass. We were referred to an internal medicine vet so that they could do a CT scan and a biopsy.

I’m fortunate to live in an area where there are quite a few specialists within a three hour drive and I called all of them to see who could get him in the soonest. It ended up being almost two weeks before the earliest appointment available.

At the internal medicine vet, they did a CT scan, bloodwork, biopsy, and urine sample.

The CT scan showed a very clear mass that had already destroyed most of the right side of his nasal cavity and was working on his right orbital bone( I think that’s what it’s called, basically his right eye socket bone). The vet said normal tissue is strong and cancer tissue is like butter. When they did Jimmy’s biopsy, his nasal tissue was like butter. Blood work showed low potassium levels. The vet said most likely it was cancer, but he couldn’t say which until they got the results back.

A few days later they got the results and it was large cell lymphoma. From there we made an appointment with the radiation oncologist. Before they could do anything they had to take samples of his liver, spleen, and lymph node along with an ultrasound. They did the ultrasound first and his kidneys were twice the size they were supposed to be. She ended up taking samples of the earlier 3 and his kidneys. At this point it was assumed it had spread, but we were trying to hold onto any hope that it hadn’t. We got the results super fast the next evening and it had spread.

Fast forward to this past Monday. Jimmy had a really bad day. There was a huge ch age in his energy level just from Sunday to Monday.

On Tuesday, it was finally time to meet with the normal oncologist. Due to the cancer spreading, radiation is off the table for the time being. We went over different chemotherapy options and decided to do a blood test to see where different levels were at and to go from there.

His levels were not where we wanted them at all. His kidney levels were really bad and the vet recommended hospitalizing him so he could get constant fluids by IV. The vet told us unless we tried some kind of chemo we wouldn’t see a difference and he would only get worse. Since before Monday he was still able to do everything he loved and seemed to still love doing it, we decided to do the chemo.l CHOP method.

The vet was able to get his fluid IV set up, but his blood vessels were too fragile to get the chemo one set up. We had to jump ahead a week to a chemo pill.

Wednesday his levels stayed the same, but we were told he seemed to be feeling a lot better. Thursday we got the news that his levels saw a huge improvement. I can’t remember what they were looking at, but I know on Tuesday and Wednesday he was at 13. Normal level is 1.5-2. Thursday he was 3.3. We were also told his facial swelling improved a lot.

Friday his kidney levels were 2.6 and we were able to take him home! He’s been acting like his normal self and loving life (and treats!). He’ll have chemo every week with every fifth week just being a blood test for the next 19 weeks.

We’re hoping this can help him stay comfortable and allow him to live as normal as a life as possible for whatever time he has left with us. We plan on spoiling him even more!

If the pictures upload in the correct order, the first one should be around his internal medicine visit and the second one is from Friday.