OT. How much would you pay to treat 16-year-old cat?

Our 16 year old cat was diagnosed with thyroid disease two years ago, right after my husband lost his job. We've chosen not to medicate her due to the expense and so far she's doing okay. I just can't come up with a hundred a month for cat meds. She hollers for food a lot but remains a picky eater. She's also still quite playful for an elderly lady. One of these days we will have to have her euthanized, but not today.

Three years ago we spent over a thousand on a 12 year old lab that lasted all of a week afterwards. To this day I regret that my husband took her to the vet instead of me, as I would have had him put down instead of risking the treatment for advanced kidney failure - but I did not want to be the one who "killed his dog" and let him authorize the treatment. It would have been more merciful for the dog and better for our finances to have put him to sleep.

Bons wrote:Our 16 year old cat was diagnosed with thyroid disease two years ago, right after my husband lost his job. We've chosen not to medicate her due to the expense and so far she's doing okay. I just can't come up with a hundred a month for cat meds. She hollers for food a lot but remains a picky eater. She's also still quite playful for an elderly lady. One of these days we will have to have her euthanized, but not today.

Try some baby food - any meat flavor(make sure no onion powder in the ingredients). I have a picky cat who is hard to keep weight on. She loves gerber brand chicken flavor baby food. I put it on her wet food. She eats the baby food and then continues to eat the food underneath. Then, later, she begs for more food, and i put a blop of baby food on top again.

We lost a little dog that we had for over 16 years not very long ago. I would have put her down but my husband just couldn't let her go. Her meds were expensive but that wasn't the issue. I couldn't stand to see her suffer but my husband couldn't stand to let her go. One day she just walked away and although we spent 2 days looking we never found her. She did it in her own way. We both would have liked to bury her but she never gave us a chance.

VikingGnome wrote:My dear cat just diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. She is losing weight, always begging for food, drinking excessive water and lots of litterbox clumps. The vet said she also has some kidney problems, possibly related to too much thyroid or a separate problem. The standard treatment is radioactive iodine. I would have to take cat to Memphis for a week and total costs could exceed $2,000. She probably only has a couple years of life left. I certainly would not close to just not treat her and watch her starve to death with heart and kidney failure. I'm trying to decide what to do, I don't have $2k and struggle to pay my own medical bills.

My thoughts and prayers are with you during this difficult time. I hope you will be a peace with whatever decision you make.

P.S. I think what you do at the shelter is amazing.

Gnome, it's been mentioned above, but if you are feeding your cats dry food, I suggest a switch to a quality wet. After one of my cats developed diabetes, I switched all of them to Wellness brand low carbohydrate wet cat food. After about a year on wet food and insulin, the one cat was cured of diabetes - at least his blood sugar levels no longer required me to give him shots. The other cats also greatly improved in weight, coat, energy, and apparent healthiness. I've kept them all on the wet food since. Although the food costs more, my vet bills have gone down. My cats are all 15.
Food alone may not help your kitty, but it won't hurt.

Jay

Did they check her blood sugar? The eating and peeing thing sounds like it could also be diabetes.

SabrinaFaire wrote:Did they check her blood sugar? The eating and peeing thing sounds like it could also be diabetes

Yes it does. I almost mentioned that, but I thought surely the vet included that in his tests. It is certainly worth looking into. Feline diabetes can be successfully managed without being terribly expensive. Feline blood sugar can be read with a human glucometer from Walmart which costs around $12 with strips at about $20 per 50, IIRC. There is lots of info on the web regarding taking care of cats with diabetes.

It would probably depend on how attached I was to the cat. Hyperthyroidism is easy to treat with radioactive iodine. Maybe you could
shop around for a lower price or check with the AVH to see if you could get help with the bill. You could get another five or so years with your
cat with luck and good medical care. I wiped out half of my retirement money treating my thirteen year old dog. It is really a very personal choice and only
you can make it. And I wouldn't beat up on your self regardless of which choice you make. Also veterinary practices vary a lot in prices. We have one vet that charges twenty five dollars just to take a blood pressure. I go to a vet that goes out of the way to keep her prices low. I would check around.

Deleted. Do what your heart tells you to do. I did 4 years ago and still cant talk about it.

Have you looked into treatments other than use of radioactive iodine? There are medications that also will work.

I have an almost 17 year old cat that I've been treating for hyperthyrodism for almost 3 years. The medication is methimazole (felimazole) which is in the form of a once-a-day pill. It's not particularly expensive.

There are tricks to pilling a cat but it is manageable once you learn how to do it.

You will need the vet to take a blood sample in order to determine the dosage that is needed. This test should be repeated at least once per year, maybe more often if indications are that the treatment is not going well (continued weight loss, hyperactivity, or on the other side, a cat that sleeps more than usual).

A few hundred dollars per year will keep you cat going just fine. Much cheaper than the radioactive iodine option that you've been quoted.

Our 16 year-old, Kitano, was euthanized just three weeks ago. The previous cat had full expensive intervention. So we had planned that once he became sick, we would euthanize quickly. We did try a rescue effort for a few days ($800), just to test should he respond and await his lab results suggestive of untreatable cancer. The vet's office was so supportive, "you're giving him a gift" to end his suffering. We're still grieving, but less so knowing that we faced the decision to not prolong his death.

Kitatonic wrote:Our 16 year-old, Kitano, was euthanized just three weeks ago. The previous cat had full expensive intervention. So we had planned that once he became sick, we would euthanize quickly. We did try a rescue effort for a few days ($800), just to test should he respond and await his lab results suggestive of untreatable cancer. The vet's office was so supportive, "you're giving him a gift" to end his suffering. We're still grieving, but less so knowing that we faced the decision to not prolong his death.

I think the main question is whether you are prolonging their life or prolonging their death.

It's such a difficult decision. I would try some of the other poster's excellent suggestions (i.e. food, second opinion vet) first and observe for any response. You know your kitty best.

My Callie does not have diabetes (vet ruled that out with tests), I have always fed Callie wet food and she only likes one flavor--salmon. But she loves Temptation treats (salmon, of course). Begs for treats all day long and eats two cans of Fancy Feast salmon classic pate'. She weighed just 7 pounds at the vets yesterday. She's normally 8.5 to 9 pounds. More tests are needed to determine her kidney function. All we know right now is that she is not concentrating urine. Specific gravity was way below normal. If kidney problems coexist with thyroid problem, that would certainly be part of my decision.

I have put down a 5-year-old cat I adopted as a stray kitten for chronic and acute renal failure. Autopsy showed his kidneys were damaged as a stray kitten by licking up antifreeze. My precious Scottish Fold developed terminal renal failure at age 5 and put down.

I am very concerned about pet suffering and may have kept some of my cats a bit longer. I think it is selfish to keep a pet alive while suffering just for my own companionship needs. I have had Callie almost 1/4 of my life. So has brought so much love and purpose to my life. I will treat her with dignity and respect she deserves.

VikingGnome wrote: I am very concerned about pet suffering and may have kept some of my cats a bit longer. I think it is selfish to keep a pet alive while suffering just for my own companionship needs. I have had Callie almost 1/4 of my life. So has brought so much love and purpose to my life. I will treat her with dignity and respect she deserves.

I do the tests required to determine if it can be treated, have a good prognosis, and not too much suffering. If not, then it is time to let go. And I appreciate a vet who is honest about that. Years ago, I had an almost 19 year old cat with liver failure. I could tell from the assistant and the vet, the way they looked and talked, that this was the end. But it was a chain vet (Banfield), and they must be required to push sales. They told me about all the emergency care they could do. I had the blood work done to make sure it wasn't one option that could actually be treated. I learned to do sub-Q fluids at home. When he quit eating 3 days later, I knew it was time to let him go. That day, I took him back to me old vet across town. That vet later retired, and the replacement was fine at first, but did not do a good job of Quinn's second dental surgery. I decided she was either incompetent or trying to milk me one bad tooth at a time.

So, I switched to a friend's vet who is great. A couple years ago, Chase seemed off. I thought he was constipated and tried to give him a massage. I felt what I thought was a tumor. I got up early, called the vet, and headed in. They did an exam, felt his kidneys being too large, and did an xray. The vet was honest. He told me he could do more diagnostic test, and he could do special treatment. All that would cost about $1000. But he would probably only live a month, even with that. It was time to let go, and he was honest enough to tell me in a nice way that my only option was a month of suffering and expense, with nothing good at the end of it. Chase was only 12, but I let him go that day.

For me, it is about quality of life. If a short amount of suffering through treatment is likely to result in years of good health, then I will do my best to go for it. If they are not likely to get well and it will cause suffering, then it is time to let go. My last dog had bad arthritis, and the medication was expensive but worked well. Had she been a large dog, I could have gotten the people pills for cheap. But at 12 pounds, her dosage would have been 1/10 of a pill. Not possible to measure accurately. Over time, it took more to keep her pain free, and I went ahead and increased her dosage. IT didn't matter if I killed her kidneys. Without the pain medication, she was in horrible pain, unable to jump the one stair back into the house. With the pain medication, she could go up and down to each floor in the house. I figured I would keep her pain free as long as I could. My only option was to let her go. I got another good year with her, and by the time the medication no longer worked, she was up past triple the dosage.