Friday, August 31, 2012
The end is near.
Pika's behavior has changed in the last few days. He is sleeping much more than usual and when we look for him he tends to be in closets or other secluded spots. To me, this says that he's in pain. He also doesn't appear interested in food anymore, and for him that is huge. I scooped him up last night so I could get a weight and wasn't happy with the result, he has dropped from 13.5 lbs down to 11.5 lbs. I'm afraid the end is near. After work this afternoon I'm going to swing by the vet's office and pick up some buprenorphine, an opiate analgesic. We hope to give him a happy, pain-free long weekend but I'm going to make an appointment to take him in on Tuesday to release him from his pain. It will be a very sad day, I wish I could have done more.
Monday, August 13, 2012
No news is??
Things are still pretty much the same, the eye continues to look horrible but Pika is not showing any indications that he is in pain. We did notice a small blister under his eye on Friday that seemed to be bothering him, so the serrapeptase treatment was suspended for a few days to allow the lesion to heal. I'll reassess this afternoon and decide then whether to start the enzyme treatment again.
Last week I read an interesting paper describing the use of a NOX inhibitor as a therapy for liver fibrosis. From what I could understand, NOX (NADPH oxidase) is part of an inter-cellular signaling pathway that results in the recruitment of macrophages to areas of inflammation to lay down scar tissue. If it works as a treatment for out of control scar tissue formation in the liver, would it do the same thing for a myofibroblastic sarcoma? So far I've only looked at treatments to reverse the damage after it's already been done, I would love to find a way to stop the damage before it happens. The problem is, I don't really know that much about the particular NOX inhibitor that was used and since it is still experimental I highly doubt I could obtain any for my own purposes. There are some NOX inhibitors that are available that I've been looking at, but they are expensive and I haven't been able to find papers that would be helpful in determining the correct dosage for a cat. For now this will have to join the ALK inhibitor I was looking at as something that may hold promise, but which I will not likely be able to try.
An article about the NOX inhibor treatment can be found here:
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120808/Study-reports-new-potential-NOX-inhibitor-therapy-for-liver-fibrosis.aspx
Last week I read an interesting paper describing the use of a NOX inhibitor as a therapy for liver fibrosis. From what I could understand, NOX (NADPH oxidase) is part of an inter-cellular signaling pathway that results in the recruitment of macrophages to areas of inflammation to lay down scar tissue. If it works as a treatment for out of control scar tissue formation in the liver, would it do the same thing for a myofibroblastic sarcoma? So far I've only looked at treatments to reverse the damage after it's already been done, I would love to find a way to stop the damage before it happens. The problem is, I don't really know that much about the particular NOX inhibitor that was used and since it is still experimental I highly doubt I could obtain any for my own purposes. There are some NOX inhibitors that are available that I've been looking at, but they are expensive and I haven't been able to find papers that would be helpful in determining the correct dosage for a cat. For now this will have to join the ALK inhibitor I was looking at as something that may hold promise, but which I will not likely be able to try.
An article about the NOX inhibor treatment can be found here:
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120808/Study-reports-new-potential-NOX-inhibitor-therapy-for-liver-fibrosis.aspx
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