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A Bit of Bad Luck: We found a lesion

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beau-getting-neck-rubs

Hey Pet Parents & Pet Lovers,

It has been a pretty rough month for us at Pets Overload, given Beau’s health and recent operations. Well, that’s not all… About a week ago we were petting Beau and felt a few bumps on his back. At first, we weren’t too concerned because when we parted his hair it looked like he had a few scars that could have been from scratching too hard or from his last quarrel with Walker.

We called the vet immediately and let them know, but they didn’t seem too concerned with the bump as they also thought it could be a scar that didn’t heal. They told us they would check it when we came in next (which was a couple days after the phone call.)

After we got Beau’s stitches removed (which was a decently painless process I will describe on a later date), the vets immediately shaved Beau revealing an infected lesion. The lesion was round and our first worry was: he has ringworm. The vets did some tests and confirmed Beau doesn’t have ringworm, but definitely has an infection of some sort.

We were given two options:

  1. Do extensive tests to figure out what the cause is, and delay treatment waiting up to a week for results.
  2. Go straight into treatment (with antibiotics and ointments, while watching very carefully over the next few days to see if it heals or gets worse.)

We chose the second. Given the amount of stress Beau has been having with recovery, we thought it would be best to go in with less harsh remedies and not have to put him on another operating table. We also didn’t want to spend a week waiting for results and delaying treatment when the senior vet highly believed that antibiotics and creams would help.

The vet put it this way:

Antibiotics and topical cream are going to be the best choices right now because they aren’t harsh enough on his body to prolong his operations’ healing process. If we start using things like steroids or other forms of treatment it may solve this new problem but may start causing more problems in regards to his cystotomy & perennial urostomy. The more time we delay, the more chances his skin will die and fall off and we will have to go through another surgery to repair him. That will be another long healing process, so at least if we start treating now we can be certain it will get smaller if not disappear completely.

He then offered us the opportunity to send in photos of Beau’s lesion every day so if they see something odd, or troubling we’d go back in immediately for tests/a stronger treatment.

Beau was then given a 2-week injectable antibiotic called Convenia and Theraderm Cream for the lesion which is to be put on him twice a day.

I’m so happy to tell you… I think we made the right choice! Beau’s lesion is getting smaller and looks a lot better, and while we are still a bit worried about it and extremely confused where it came from, we’re happy to see it’s healing and will do anything to make sure he doesn’t get it again.

I will say, I’m still interested in doing tests to see where this came from, but it feels like one of those situations where I have to make a choice where to spend the money on my little one. If Beau is to get worse, we need to make sure we have enough money for those treatments, rather than blowing all of our funds on discovery.

My partner and I made an agreement that if we didn’t see improvement within the first few days we would take him back to the vet for tests, but if things looked like they were getting better, we would trust the vet’s visual diagnosis (and the confirmation that he doesn’t have ringworm) knowing that this time we didn’t have the funds to extensively test him.

So this is where I ask my fellow pet parents. Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t do all of the tests based on either preexisting conditions or finances? What did you do? Not that we regret our choice (especially because he is drastically healing), do you feel like you would have made the same choice as us? Let me know in the comments below.

All Posts in this Series:

A Bit of Bad Luck: We found a lesion
December 5, 2017

An Update on the Lesion on our Cat Beau
December 17, 2017

Some okay news about the Lesion
December 22, 2017

Final Update about my Cat’s Skin Lesion
January 22, 2018

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Hey there Johnny! I don’t know if you remember me from the comments on the posts re: Beau’s PU surgery (I’m the fellow Torontonian with a sweet boy named Moritz!) but I’m back again! As luck would have it, it looks like Moritz is having a similar issue. He’s due to have his two week post-PU check up tomorrow and has been doing great, but I was running my fingers through his fur only to feel a strange sort of scab thing sort of on his spinal area? It was flaky and red underneath and freaked me out immediately. Fur was lifted from the area and I was able to pull out a substantial sized clump without even having to try. It didn’t seem to hurt him though, as he was just sleeping in my lap. Upon further examination, I found another patch on his side as well. Hopefully it’s not anything serious!!! I remembered that I had seen something about lesions on here and lo and behold, here I am, haha. Anyway, I’ll be reading up on your experiences once again— so thank you, thank you, thank you for being so informative and thorough with your documentation! I, as well as tons of other concerned pet parents greatly appreciate it!!!

    Take care!!!

    Reply

    • Absolutely remember you! THat’s intense. Do you mind sending me an e-mail with photos through my contact page? I want to see if they look similar, because that’s so odd that they would both get them directly after the PU surgery. Our vet still doesn’t know what caused it. Please also feel free to include what vet you went to (if you’re comfortable with that). I’m curious to know if we went to the same one.

      Reply

  2. hello pets overload its dennis the vizsla dog hay in kayses like this ware they kant git the testing dun for wotever reezun my mama and dada yoozhually wil proseed with konservativ treetmints baysed on wot they think the problem is so we think yoo did the rite thing!!! meenwile i am sending beau lots of vizsla tail wags and the hipster kitties send purrs!!! ok bye

    Reply

  3. I agree. Start with the simple and take things from there.

    We had to help a kitty (Toki) to the RB years ago, because he was diagnosed with severe and unstable diabetes and it would have not been possible to pay for all the treatments, let alone take care of him when we went out of town which at the time was often due to aging and unwell parents on both sides of the family. And our funds were already tight due to sending the unfurs to private school. So we had to make that hard and almost unthinkable decision. But the poor dude would not have enjoyed the cramped lifestyle either and the stress of being boarded out many times sometimes weekly…

    When Minko became ill with IBD, things l=were better for us financially, but the first vet was horrid, and we had to change to one who was willing to start with the simple treatment of medication and hand feeding. (first vet thought we needed all these costly tests to prove her right, and thought petcretary was crazy to feed him with a spoon. Sheesh.) Anypaws, he lived that way with support of meds and spoonfeeding for almost three years. He even gained back some of the lost weight…and he passed from a stroke, not related to his IBD…
    petcretary would do it all over again if need be…

    Reply

      • He’s doing really well! It looks like it’s almost all gone, but we’re going to the vet today to see if there is anything else we have to do!

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    • Thank you for this detailed comment. It’s so hard to lose a little one, let alone have to make the decision to help them over the RB. I’m sending you lots of love and know you had to make the right choice.

      And I agree. Sometimes finding the right vet to give you the advice you need is necessary. On one of our vet visits, they told us we needed to put Beau down. I’m so glad we didn’t, because he’s currently sitting on my lap while I type out this sentence purring.

      Reply

  4. I would have made the same choice; you’ve got to keep the stress on the cat down if you can. We haven’t yet had to make a decision based on available funding, thank goodness, but I think I’d break the bank if I knew it would help. Keep us up to date on Beau, please.

    Reply

    • For sure. I don’t think we want to get into the loan territory until we absolutely need to as a last resort, but we’re definitely not scared of going there if we have to with Beau.

      Reply

  8. So sorry to hear about poor Beau’s ongoing health issues!

    You might want to look into colloidal silver. The stuff is like a liquid antibiotic that builds the immune system and kills bacterial, fungal, and viral infections. I’ve used it successfully on my cats and dogs’ eye, ear and tooth issues. I actually keep it on hand at all times. Unlike antibiotics, it doesn’t harm the good gut bacteria and it is harmless with no side effects.

    The stuff really is amazing and I even recently wrote an article about it on my blog, which is all about my own extensive cat and dog experiences and saving money. I share what brand I’ve had the best luck with as well as the extensive research I did on colloidal silver, which even opened my own eyes to its wide-ranging capabilities. It doesn’t burn or have a taste, so you can use it on/in your pets or yourself without worry.

    I understand being hesitant to treat your pet yourself, but vet care has gotten ridiculously expensive, especially with all the drugs they prescribe, some of which have lethal side effects. I learned that hard lesson first hand. 🙁

    If nothing else, you can go to the vet, get a diagnosis, and then research and treat the issue at home. A good reference site for home remedies for things for both people and pets is http://www.earthclinic.com. I’ve used it a few times with very good results.

    Reply

    • I actually never thought about CS. That’s so silly of me to not think of! I’ve definitely gotten lots of great feedback about it and actually have a bottle of it in the store. Maybe I’ll grab it and try it on Beau! Thanks for the idea CC!

      Agreed with the: vet care is too expensive. I find it a bit ridiculous that vets are so expensive. Taking care of your pet can be very hard, especially if you’re in emergency care. We spent tons more in the emergency with much less help than we did with our regular vet, but our regular vet wasn’t open 🙁

      Reply

    • Thank you Ellen. I’m really hoping this time it’s the end of all the issues 🙁 He’s just such a perfect kitty for us and we want him to live a long healthy life. <3

      Reply

  10. I’m so glad things appear to be improving! The day I posted our first blog post, I felt a lump on Bear’s back. I was a wreck. I was scared it was a sarcoma. It was rather hard and round. The vet removed it and we had the histopathology by the end of the week … it was just a lipoma that became infected as the tissue began dying when it outgrew its blood supply. I don’t know what Beau’s lump feels like – but that could be the case here as well (it’s shrinking because of the antibiotic). It’s completely benign by the way (other than the infection). Our vet went in to remove it because it was so hard and he didn’t think he’d get any fluid in a needle aspiration. He said the tumor was nasty – and took three times the tissue he planned to. We’re so lucky it turned out to be benign!

    Reply

    • Interesting. I’ll bring this up in a phone call with our vet tomorrow. That could totally be it! Thank you for always being there for us. I really, really appreciate it.

      Reply

  11. OMC! Sending healing purrz to Beau! He’s been through the proverbial wringer. The lesions aren’t near the sites where he gets his vaccines, aren’t they? I don’t wish to add to your high stress level, but watch him on the Coventia since several blogging cats have had very bad reactions to it. And, yes, we’ve been in the situation where we’ve had to send our furry family members to the RB because we couldn’t pay for treatment they needed.

    Reply

    • I honestly don’t know where Beau’s first shots were since the doctor refused to do them in front of us. (We’ve changed vets since since we believe in being in the room with our little ones while certain procedures are done.) I’ll look into it though and make sure this wasn’t the cause.

      I’m sorry to hear you’ve had to send your family members to the RB because of how expensive treatment is. That has been one of our biggest fears since getting Beau and I don’t know if I could be able to adopt another kitty for a long, long while if we had to make that choice.

      Sending you big hugs.

      Reply

  13. Hoping Beau is on the mend. My Cody used to get “hot spots” is that what Beau had? ALL of the time and he used to be on Prednisonal a few times a year. Cody’s “lesions” “hot spots” were due to environmental allergies and he appears to have finally grown out of them.

    Reply

    • No, unfortunately this was not a hot spot. Beau has had hotspots before from food, but this was an inch wide lesion that was bubbled up.

      Reply

  14. beau; furst up, we R veree happee yur doin better, N we hope ya STAY better…sorree bout thiz;
    ewe haz had a ruff yeer buddy….thurd 🙂 we wooda made de same choice az dadz did…sum timez..
    lezz…iz better, if that makes sense….may bee dad can chex inta pet insurance; while we due knot
    have it; lotz oh R pals swearz by it….we haz all wayz been blessed in that what ever de vet said
    needed two BE done; we COULD due somehow, even if it taked a few ta pay stuff off { charge card } ♥♥

    Reply

    • We actually have pet insurance, but those …. catsturds refused to pay us out. We’ve submitted our request for this lesion and are waiting to hear whether or not they will reject us again… if they do… it’s time to change companies because it’s been 2 years and 0 pay back 🙁

      Reply

  15. We think we would have made the same choice. Our Angel Isis had once diarrhea ; Claire didn’t know why, and after two or three weeks going every two days to the vet, they found a balance with extra food and some meds (they could stop the meds after one month with the special food). The vet was fair : it was a virus, but not sure that further expensive investigations would find which one. Claire and Momo decided that as long as Angel Isis was doing well with her new special food, they would not do all the tests. Angel Isis was 8 years old at that time, and she lived until 14 without having any other digestive problem anymore. Purrs

    Reply

    • So glad to hear that Angel Isis did so well after changing the food and I’m comforted by the fact that you made a similar decision.

      Reply

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