Feline Multiple Myeloma

[annabelle07]

I have a 15 year old male cat that was diagnosed at the end of July last year with mulitple myeloma. He had no outward symptoms but over the previous 6 months had lost much of his muscle tone which is what led me to take him to the vet. His globulin level was 8.0 and total protien was at 10.9.
X-rays showed that he had punctate lesions in one front leg. I took him to several vets to try to get advice on treatment. He was originally started on Alkeran once a week and prednisone every other day but the Alkeran had an extremely negative effect on his CBC and made no improvement on his globulin levels. In Oct he was started on Luekeran 2mg every other day and prednisone on the off days. He takes his prednisone in a liquid form and that was originally about 1 1/4 cc's and that was dropped to about half after one month. After  4 weeks on Luekeran his globulin came down from nearly 11 to 9.1 and over the next two months he maintained a steady half point  drop in those levels every two weeks. He was at 6.5 as of January 4th but his test this week showed him back up to 7.5 which is the first time in almost 4 months that he has had an increase.

Outwardly he seems to feel pretty good but his appetite is not as good as it used to be, though that has happened before. He has lost some weight over the last month which I fear is because the cancer is getting in gear again. He has also had a mild case of the sniffles for about three months, he isnt congested or showing signs of infection, it is just a clear discharge and one of the other household cats has had this on and off too. The vet wants to recheck his blood in a week. We are hoping that his bloodwork will improve or at least hold steady. The worry is that the cancer has become resistant to the Luekeran. There is very little info available on this cancer in cats and treatments seem very limited. If anyone has any ideas on something else that we could be doing or any experience with cats going thru this it would help greatly.

[loriaustino]

my cat was just diagnosed with multiple myleoma - if you love your cat take him to West Chester Vet oncology research center in Pennsylvania - they are the best in the country

[Savas]

I'm sorry to hear about your kitty's illness. Have you checked out the below site? It should be a gateway site to internet info on feline cancer.

www.zzcat.com/