She is still not a good patient, I’m still needing to give up my lunch break to sit with her because she will tangle herself in her IV line otherwise, but we made it through another round of chemo. Only one more to go. Most importantly, there are no signs of the tumor trying to come back. Look at those perfect, beautiful, tumor-free cheeks (and those kinda high eyes).

I hope I’m not getting cocky in feeling like we’ve done it. Obviously, we are going to complete her treatment anyway to make sure. We surgically removed the mass on her cheek because it had almost tripled in size over about 6 weeks. It was classified as aggressive and fast-growing at the lab. It’s been a little over 3 months now since that surgery and there is nothing there. I am full of hope.

It was a particularly hectic day at work when Panther was scheduled for her chemo this time. So I had to spend my lunch break administrating her treatment. In case you were wondering, doing a slow drip chemo therapy on your own cat who is an uncooperative patient is not a restful way to spend your break. By the time we got home, we were both pretty run down. But look at that face. Still totally worth it.

We gave her some anti-nausea meds ahead of time to see if that would keep her from loosing her appetite. She stopped eating the day after treatment and I had to give her the appetite stimulant, so I’m not sure it helped. She has continued to eat over the past day despite my no longer giving it. A single dose seems to have done the trick. Obviously we’re keeping an eye on how much she eats.

She has been maybe a bit more snuggly than normal today. The kids even mentioned it. Don’t know if she’s just happy to be home or seeking comfort, but again we’ll keep an eye on things. Here she is happy snoozing on her favorite blanket that we have to keep out all year long despite it being a Christmas blanket (and for dogs even) because of how much joy it brings her. And she brings us so much joy in turn.

Only 2 treatments left to go thank goodness. It’s rough watching her not feel well, or get angry about her catheter, and there is enough going on in the world right now that sometimes it all seems just way too much. Whoever said life isn’t fair was NOT messing around.

You can tell by those eyes (and the extra bandage) that we had to give her some drugs for her to let us place her IV catheter. Despite her squirms, she did well for the drip, and her treatment went without incident.

We are four days out now, and starting yesterday she lost her appetite. She’s not a huge eater, but she doesn’t ever just – not eat anything. When she was still ignoring meal times today I contacted her doctor who recommended bringing her in for labwork and an appetite stimulant. We won’t see the lab results until tomorrow, but the appetite stimulant really did the trick. She ate a full meal about an hour after administration. Now she’s snoozing.

I hope she’s feeling better tomorrow. It’s so hard to watch her obviously not feeling well, especially since I know she isn’t feeling well as a direct result of our decision to go forward with the chemotherapy. My logical mind can understand that not doing the chemo, and just letting the cancer continue on would eventually make her feel pretty bad too, but now that’s some theoretical idea that would have maybe happened some day in the future. Today, my beautiful girl is sleepy and hiding, and I feel like it’s my fault.