From:
"cherylnj81"
Date: 2009-04-01 20:56:14 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Advice on Nina -metastisized, calcified tumors
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
As some might remember, I posted about Nina in the past and how she was diagnosed with pretty bad, metastasized, calcified tumors (over 20+ all over her abdomen) right around the time Linus fell ill with megaesophagus. She has been on borrowed time for a while now, as we were minutes away from PTS 6 weeks ago now. We were able to stablize her and she has not been in pain since then.
She seems to be doing a little worse now, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions, no matter how small. I will list what she is on and problems I think she is having. I want to emphasize that basically everything we are doing for her right now is pretty experimental, since no one expected her to make it. Some of her medications we ALREADY KNOW are not supposed to go together, but it was mix them or put her to sleep, and she hasn't had trouble with them.
So she is on Bupronex .06 twice a day, .2 Meticam once a day, 1.5 cc's of Essiac twice a day, .15 of Prednisolone twice a day (10 mg/ml), and .2 Ursodiol once a day
[Moderator's Note:
Cheryl, so that list members can know the amounts for the ones that you are measuring in cc (or ml which is the same thing), please, also give the concentration which will probably be in mg/ml. The amount of drug varies with the concentration so without also having those numbers as well as the volume people do not know how much of any drug is being given because the mg amounts need to be calculated.]
Here are some of my concerns:
- she has developed what I think must be a hugePred belly, since she her Pred was upped .5 ml 5 weeks ago. Because she is a little weak from her cancer anyway, this is making it difficult for her to walk steadily. Should we lower the Pred, thus probably decreasing her life expectancy but having it be better quality until then? (Since Pred tends to shrink tumors for a while, to my understanding) Note: we are checking with the vet tommorrow to make sure it is indeed Pred belly and not fluid building up in her abdomen or an enlarged spleen.
- Is there anything that can minimize Pred belly? Does feeding less minimize it?
- we took her off of Denasyl 1x/day because she hated it so much all the time she was on it and we wanted to make her last days more comfortable but now she has lasted longer than we could have hoped. Should we put her back on? Should we check blood levels to see where her liver is at?
- at what point do you decide to up pain meds?
- she is making a sound when she is eating her duck soup now, its as if you can hear her gulping more- what could this mean?
Thanks for any help!
Cheryl
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