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Tuxedo and his evil twin

Posted by Qrystal on July 24, 2008 at 8:17.
Category: Life. Tags: cats.

I’ve been mentioning offhand (via twitter and facebook especially) my recent concerns for our darling cat, Tuxedo, but I’ve never quite gotten around to explaining what’s going on. Some people have asked, and so I’m writing this post partly for them, and partly for other people who haven’t asked yet but really should know.

Tuxedo’s current situation

The “short, SHORT” version: he’s doing absolutely fine, wonderful even. He’s cuddly and cute and loving and playful, and for the most part, well-behaved.

It’s only when we take him to the vet that he’s trouble…!  He becomes a vicious beast, not even acknowledging the people who love him.  He becomes his own evil twin.  It’s so heartbreaking to see him turn so vicious at the vet!

Wait, what?! Why was he at the vet?

He had a wound on his paw that got restitched on July 17th. The cone in the picture is to prevent him from licking it. He’s got at least a few more days of putting up with the cone — good thing he doesn’t seem to mind it much! It’s a bit annoying to him, but he is making do very well. He’s a sucker for attention, especially if we rub his neck! :)

He could not handle having his paw bandaged though: he’s much too clever to let it stay on for long. This is the other reason why the sutures were made tightly this time: to make the bandage not necessary. Wounds heal faster when exposed to air, anyways.

REstitched?

Yes, this was the second attempt at stitching him up. The first attempt was on July 7th.

He got his cone off one night and licked out some of the stitches. It seemed that one or two were fairly loose before this night, but this night was the kicker that dislodged them entirely.  Those stitches were the “automatically fall out” design, which were supposed to be easier when it comes to removal time.  It seems they were too easy to remove!

The new stitches will have to be carefully cut off at the right time. He lets me hold his paw to look at it, and he’s very good about it actually, so I have to hope it will not be too difficult!

Why stitched in the first place?

There was a lump on his paw that got removed (via elliptical incision) because simply draining it and administering antibiotics didn’t do the trick.  (That was attempted near the end of May, and throughout June we were watching and hoping it worked.)

Wait, what?! A LUMP?!

Yeah, it was the second lump on his paw too. The first one was two Christmases ago, and it ended up draining on its own (ew!) and going away. This recent one was there for a few months, and one vet said we should just watch it longer to see if it does the same as the last.

We didn’t like that vet much, partly because it seemed we never really got as good an explanation as we wanted, nor did we get a range of choices. When a new animal hospital opened up nearby, we went there for a second opinion. I got a much better feeling from this vet. She suggested taking action, and gave us all the facts about the decisions to be made, and left it up to us — but she gave her suggestions, of course. With Tux frequently licking the wound vigorously enough for it to bleed, we wanted to DO something about it!

Interestingly, I almost needed stitches from that first checkup trip in May.  Tuxedo’s evil twin took over, and nobody could even go near him.  This being the first visit to this vet, I had to demonstrate that even I couldn’t do anything about him.  I didn’t really expect to be bitten quite that hard, of course, but there’s something nice about being scarred for life by someone you love.  Even if he wasn’t really himself at the time…

More details about the action taken

By the end of June, we had to accept that the antibiotics couldn’t kick it.

We brought Tux back in on July 7th to get the lump removed entirely and get sent it away for tests.  He came home the same day, with the cone, and with the bandage that lasted almost half a day — he must’ve just been too stoned to remove it sooner.

I kept rebandaging him with gauze and duct tape, and he was so cute when he whined about me doing this!  Eventually he just got so good at flicking his paw to loosen it, that it took longer to bandage him than it did for him to remove it.  And he started to get pissed off at me, though this was Tuxedo himself saying so, not the evil twin.  I didn’t need to be hissed at more than twice, though, because I didn’t want to tempt Dr. Hyde into making an appearance…!

Test results

The tests showed that the lump was locally malignant (yipe! cancer!). There is a chance it will come back, and a very small chance that it has already spread elsewhere.  It’s a very small chance, because this lump was way out on a limb, not near any organs, but not a zero chance, because nature can’t be predicted with certainty.

We had to ask ourselves: would it be worth doing further tests, to know if the cancer had spread or not?

• If it didn’t spread, we would have purchased some peace of mind… for now.  But it IS likely to come back sometime, so would we then do more tests? Turn him into evil-Tuxedo more often than is strictly necessary? Surely, that wouldn’t help his situation…
• If it did spread, we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, because chemotherapy costs thousands of dollars. Love may be priceless, but some things are just well beyond our means…

We opted for no further tests.  The deciding factor was that the tests wouldn’t increase his lifespan any.
He may still have years left in him, we don’t know!
All we can do now is just love him and care for him until the end of his days.
And that’s easy, especially if we avoid unnecessary vet visits. ;)

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