Well, we may be premature.

So I have been so worried about his kidneys I wanted him to reduce the prednisone.  Apparently those side effects I was not seeing (weight gain and over-eating) were diminishing.  So I just watched him war with me about food for a whole day and went back to the full dose.
Today he is so much more himself.
He loves to go outside and watch the birds.  The dove circles him and the two mocking birds that eat his leftovers watch, he watches back.  I have not had much luck of recent days doing much but sitting outside, but he does think the same kibble is tastier out there.
I keep reading about acclimating pets to new food.  It seems he literally cycles.  One day he only likes treats.  One day it is the fake steak red bits in the kitten food.  One day the green ones.  I swear, he is messing with me!

So, because he has a foot stool near the window but likes to sleep on the electric blanket all day (on) I saw a little sort of an electric muff in the Walgreens and put it on his glass viewing table with a (yes, I have one) Snuggy, all folded up to allow me to unplug and possibly save a bit of fear and electricity.

He is good today.

I am ok too!

Long Weekends.

He greeted me with a half-hearted stretch this morning.  I think the belly is stretching his skin a bit much and he stops after reaching out with his paws.  He doesn't follow through all the way to the tip of his tail like he used to.  We slept with the window open and it was wonderful.  I don't keep the air conditioning very low as I don't actually DO much around here in the summer anyway, so I don't mind, but I have worried that he may be uncomfortable.  He has a corner in the office/studio that is on the tile and he will sit in there while I type.  Sometimes he stays after I leave.
He has started protesting being petted.
He was NEVER a cuddler, but when he was sick before we would commune.  He would not put up with my lap but always found a flat spot from chin to belly on me to sleep most of the night.  In the winter, I think he found it too warm.  He will pop up beside me (always just as I am starting to doze off....) and say hi, but when I pet him, he backs off.....
I notice him staring off into space.
Last week he had a couple of tummy upsets but he is eating the wet food (OH, how much I hate that stuff!  I was so proud he never bothered me with opening cans because I gave in to begging etc.  NOW he will brazenly reach up to sniff the french fries I bring into the house... just in case he wants it!) and it moves past the mass quite handily.
What a trouper.
He doesn't like fingers.  He bites.... but he LOVES to rub against my toes.

The Photos of the End

I have to show you what stopped my life cold last month.

The Dude now looks like a pregnant girl with a four or five kitten litter ready to pop.  I must say, he actually acts that way too.  But... I was explained that the BIG WHITE BALL (a month ago... this was about the size of my fist) is a tumor.  Nothing more or less.  The little blip open space at the high spot near his spine is his stomach, the couple of blops at the bottom are  his bowel.

He has been eating soft food and I am setting my own time table:  When he doesn't have a bowel movement for three days or he begins vomiting a lot, I will know it has taken up all of his digesting space and we will have to make arrangements.....

..... but..... this time there is NO good outlook.  Anyone who has a vet in town that actually thinks they want to whittle him away would be welcome, but I cannot pay.  I am reactivating my go fund me account, to see if I can give the extra to my own absolutely wonderful vet who has worked with me so long and been so generous.  I am WAY behind, and fighting to pay the other bills. JUST something to feel like I am useful.

MEANWHILE, he is absolutely normal.
I was thinking of renaming the blog "Dead Cat Walking" but although morbidly humorous, I can't sustain the giggle that I had when he merrily waddled away and took a swipe at my foot on the way.

This post may not last long.  I just needed to vent... I mostly just watch him sleep and see him inhaling and exhaling and it makes me happy.....
Thanks to you all.  I really can't tell you how much I appreciated EVERY single one of you.
dj*

Good Bye To the Bottle. Can Your Rescue Use It?

For close to two years these little bottles have been keeping the Dude from crawling the walls, yo-yo-ing his weight up and down and allowing him to find a good life. Tonight will be his last dose if all goes well.

The nifty thing about this process is that it only kills cells that make thyroid hormone. The gland that is supposed to is regulated elsewhere and when the tumor cells start going crazy, spewing out the stuff, the gland is told to shut down. Because it goes dormant, we regulate the amount in his system with this drug. And it works well.

For two weeks ahead, we want the bad cells to do their worst! The radioactive stuff seeks ONLY these kinds of cells and chews them up. Also, just in case ANY of the normal cells are functioning, we try to drive them way underground by the sensors in the pituitary shutting the spigot off hard because of all the yuck from the bad guys. We want ALL of the medicine out of the system so the treatment can do its worst.

After the three hot days, when the cat is actively radioactive, before the half lives start breaking the iodine down, the levels will drop as the treatment clears out. By the time the bad cells are gone, the nuclear missiles are too. When the all clear sounds, the dormant gland will be awakened again and there may be a few odd months of him starting to regulate his own levels.

They tell me not to panic for three months. There is no exact prediction, but way into the 90%'s of the cats come out with perfectly normal thyroids. It is rare that a healthy thyroid is damaged by the process. Apparently if the thyroid comes out underfunctional. (hypo) it was already damaged for some other reason. We x-rayed him to be sure no physical abnormality kept him from having it work.

Fingers crossed I will no longer need this half bottle again!

I am going to send this post to as many local cat rescues as I can. This is a good three or four months of normal for a rescuer who has a sick kitty and can use a little help.

IF any of you know a rescue that needs this, drop me a line and we can meet up when my vet says The Dude is good to go. All the generous people that have helped me needs a bit of passing it forward. THANK YOU ALL.

Woke Up and Hit The Ground Running!

My mom used to tell me not to THINK POOR. Something about magnetism. That you attract the things you need, so welcome them in!

Today I am running off to talk to (yet another) charity about participating in a fund raising event.

It is what I can afford for advertising and always does good doing good! After that I am meeting an artist friend who is not so savvy on the internet and wants to give me CASH!!! The thought sort of shivers my toes, as somehow a bank account is easier to track than bills, but it is going INTO the fund!

While drinking my coffee I got a call from another old friend asking if I could help the widow of her mentor arrange a donation site for his memorial expenses. YEAH.... as usual.... it is so easy for me to say yes! Hard to get away and do the nuts and bolts of marketing my art.

I am seriously considering making some mini-workshops for artists who need a little help navigating facebook, twitter, blogging and now crowd-funding. All I need is a place and some way to let everyone SEE what I am doing on my antique laptop!

All that aside.....

I am very bad at watching paint dry (hahahahaha! literally one of my job skills that I lack!!!) or water boil. Staring at my cat and seeing how well he is recovering from his bad medication episode is reminding me how perfect we are for each other. He ignores me. I talk to him.... that is as it should be.

Here he is in my bathroom alerting me that I did not turn off the tap properly!

The Sacrifice

When you go to the radiation therapy, you are asked to bring something of comfort of the cat that will be destroyed (because it will be radioactive!)

A bit oxymoron, as how hard it is to bring something beloved and comforting that will never be seen again. But this is a no-brainer.

The Dude has NEVER destroyed a stitch of fabric or furniture from his youth (socks - yes, sofas -no) because a sisal scratch post was all I ever got him. This particular configuration has always been a favorite, in fact this is his fourth one.

IF I find another in a pet store, it will be replaced. It has hung along looking worse and worse because I have NOT seen any. A new post-style has been donated by my boyfriend, but actually what the Dude loves is sprawling across it and scratching it while he reclines . . . What a slacker!

Hyper Thyroid.

Long time ago, I heard about this disorder when a former roommate had an old girl with the problem. She was a very grumpy bony little old lady.

I had to treat her with the TRANS DERMAL gel. Morning and evening... first you had to catch her.... then rub the TINIEST amount of Vaseline stuff in her ears. I really had no idea what it was.

Then when the Dude got it, I woke up.

I am going to ramble. I would really appreciate anyone who could do it more clearly, jumping in and giving me some corrections, but here goes:

The thyroid is sort of the gas pedal in the body. It tells all the other systems how fast or slow to run. If it is sending out too little hormone, you get fat, bad slow and bad hair.

If it is too much, everything makes you crazy. Much like me on coffee, hyperthyroid can give a cat upset tummy - it is always hungry, but it burns it up too fast too - intolerance to heat which is bad as I am cheap so I keep the house very warm in the summer. It ramps up the heart, the kidneys . . you name it, it can go hyper! Old cats get it a lot.

The gland that does the work gets whacked out and works too hard. Some of the cells get big and sloppy and take over the whole process. Much like the normal guys in social situations, the fat sloppy hyper cells go amok and the sane ones (notified that there is WAY TOO MUCH thyroid in the system by the pituitary gland) hide from sight, laying low, not wanting to be involved. But they are still there but seriously chilling.

Three ways to treat it are:

By meds. It basically negates all the hormones. My cat is really very easy compared to my old friend. He is not HAPPY but hardly protests and even reminds me to get up and NOT to go to bed too early without his treat (an that ugly thing I shove in his mouth too.) They have pills and plungers and rubs and it is all pretty effective really. The symptoms go way back, the weight goes up and they look real good on the outside. BUT they are not cured. The meds put a lot of wear and tear on these organs too.

Surgery. I guess now that they have micro stuff, it might be better, but a cat is a small body and it needs anesthesia and cutting open and recovery. All that and HOPING they got the right stuff. Lots of cats have other issues and it is always risky working on sick cats or even sick people. This is sort of a last resort and I have heard some sad tales.

RADIATION (spooky music please!)

My vet has recommended Radiocat which is a franchise. It has a procedure that is really amazingly simple with a nearly unbelievable success rate.

Remember back in the Japan earthquake they were giving everyone iodine? Thyroids and iodine have a very wonderful relationship. Our salt had iodine in it as a good thing. Keeping everything regular as it were. Apparently thyroids attract the stuff. The idea was to jam tons on NON radioactive iodine in and fill up the places the bad stuff would go - they are just that tight!

It also seems that the Radioactive stuff is a sizzling hot shot. Where it lands it fries. As with all radioactive stuff it moves fast and dies young. SO the idea is:

Shoot a specific amount of the isotope into the system to have it go home to the tissue that makes the thyroid hormone. As the good guys are quietly hibernating keeping out of the damage caused by the screwed up cells, by the time the I131 had burned the intruders out, the healthy tissue comes back to work in a clear clean environment. Both the iodine and the bad cells are gone. The pituitary notices the levels going back down and calls the normal cells get back to work. With a little settling in everything should be up and running fine in a month or so!

ALL (and I have looked real hard for bad stories) of the info I read on it is really good. The potential damage is so small, and the damage itself is much LESS nasty (hypothyroid... the fat cat?) and much more easy to manage.

Feel free to comment and correct. I have a lot of fun trying to make sense of complicated things so I may be having TOO much fun and not really understanding it.

The called me back and I missed the call, so we will probably NOT get a slot until August. Hopefully that make it PAID IN FULL . . . .