As you can see, Doctor Bob is a human veterinarian. And Doctor Leon, who is both big-boned and fluffy, is a feline consulting specialist.
Dr Leon strolled into the exam room the other day to greet me warmly, and then assisted the vet tech in showing me how I will administer Riley’s pills. He gobbled up the extra “pills” after the demonstration concluded. He obviously loves his work.
Arlington Cat Clinic in Arlington Heights, IL has been a full service feline veterinary hospital in the NW suburbs since 1988. We understand the special role your pet plays in your family and are dedicated to becoming your partner in your pet’s health care from kitten hood to its senior years. We specialize in preventive health care including vaccinations, dental care, diagnostics and surgery. In addition, we offer behavioral consultations, grooming and boarding services. The clinic also carries effective flea products and special diets, as well as cat toys and gifts.
Our cat Riley has been diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and we’re about to embark on “the new normal” with him. He seems fine but his weight is down since last year and his white blood cell count was high, so our vet Dr Esbenson of Arlington Cat Clinic sent a sample on to the feline oncologist. So in a small scale we’re experiencing some of the fear and uncertainty that anyone with a cancer diagnosis faces.
It’s the chronic form, slow to develop, and depending on how this chemotherapy and steroids regimen works out, he could be happy and relatively healthy for years.
Is the end of cancer conceivable in the future? Is it possible to eradicate this disease from our bodies and our societies for ever? Or should our goals be more modest?
We’ll shoot for modest goals; we “pill” him every other day with a steroid called Prednisolone that’s well tolerated by cats, and he got his first dose Thursday.
Every two weeks he gets a chemotherapy drug called Chlorambucil, starting today. It has to be preceded by a blood test and we have to wear gloves when handling and giving it to him, because it’s nasty stuff that kills white blood cells by altering their DNA apparently. It can’t be crushed and put in his food; it’s coated because it has to get farther into the gut.
via Cancer: Should we stop trying to cure it? | Siddhartha Mukherjee | World news | The Guardian.