Bette Davis died May 19, 2023 of radiation effects after one month to the day (4/19/23) of treatment for Nerve Sheath Tumor. We are getting a necropsy to know the exact cause but something was compressing her esophagus and larynx, and she could not swallow, then could not breathe. Below are notes from the Facebook page.
May 16:
Another late night trip to the ER. Bette suddenly is not doing well today unlike yesterday. Yesterday the dentist said she was doing great, she was improving. Yesterday she ate a bowl of food on her own. Yesterday she seem to be on the mend. Today she can’t swallow, she coughs, she chokes, she spits up most of her food. She won’t eat on her own. We have a hard time, we have to go very, very slowly feeding her. We have to make sure she takes her meds first and keeps them down, then wait and feed her. I took her to the ER, to the local one that we use and they were going to do x-rays and sub Q fluids, but they can’t do endoscopy to check to see if her throat is closing up. I called the vet school ER and they said they do endoscopy. I run her up to the vet school an hour drive only to be told they don’t do endoscopy. That’s an internal medicine appointment that I have to schedule and that’s a few weeks out. They claim she can breathe and was oxygenating. Therefore they can’t admit her and then have endoscopy see her as a hospital patient. I’ve decided I’m not going to go back to the vet school ER because they misdiagnosed her last week when they said, everything’s fine, we don’t know why she’s drooling, tongue hanging, out open mouth breathing. That turned out to be the trigeminal nerve damage that her personal vet thought it was when she saw her on Wednesday the day after the ER visit. So tomorrow I have to call a couple local specialized hospital animal clinics. They don’t have ERs and I have to see if they do endoscopy. I have to see if anyone can see her. She can’t eat, and we’re not getting enough into her.
May 18:
Not good news. Bette is currently in the local ER again and this time X-ray shows there’s a compression on her esophagus which is why today she’s been in increasing respiratory distress.
Earlier today I had her in at her vet. And the plan that we came up with was to have her get a shot of steroids because she’s not able to keep her medication down. And she got a shot of Cerenia. And we were not supposed to feed her. Just give her some water by mouth. But keep an eye on her. And we were going to take her back tomorrow to do the same thing again and discuss with the surgeon about doing a feeding tube through the esophagus. Then we were going to do sub q shots over the weekend and then on Monday back to the vet and see what the plan is to go forward and see how she’s doing. Her vet thought that if we just left the throat alone, then maybe it would heal assuming that it’s due to the Trigeminal nerve damage. But then, about 6 o’clock, she went into distress. She was panicking trying to get out of her box, trying to get out of the room. Just panicking. We got the oxygen. I contacted her vet. We started using the oxygen. And then I was texting with her vet, and the vet eventually said to get her to the ER, that she was in respiratory distress. We all assumed her larynx was collapsing. But it’s fine. It’s the esophagus that is partially closed. It’s always closed until used. But she’s gotten gas into it-the gagging, coughing are symptoms and causes-on both sides of the closed part. But something is closing the middle part which causes her to drool and gag back up anything we put down. And it has something to do with pressure on larynx. I can’t recall what’s causing breathing issues.
What is it? She needs an MRI to know. What do we want to do? Find out what it is. Because she wasn’t dying. Not from normal decline. But we need to know. And that’s if she can be stable enough to move her. We’re out of oxygen. We had two brand new cans that were nearly empty. We used all three to get her here. I’ll complain tomorrow. What did we expect? That she’d be worn out from radiation treatment. That when it was over, she’d rest and start therapy next month. That we’d get her through to the end of the year before maybe starting over. We didn’t expect nerve damage, excessive drooling from it, mouth, breathing issues, and a new tumor or something causing this complication.
May 19:
The only update is that the vet called around 1 o’clock in the morning to say that that she had woken herself up because she finally urinated-she hasn’t urinated since 1 AM Tuesday. She urinated and defecated, and then panicked and her breathing ramped up and she was struggling to breathe. So they had to increase the oxygen, increase the medication to relax her, etc. The vet at that time wasn’t sure if she would make it through the night. She is currently stable, but stable with oxygen and sedation. They’re not sure she can be transported for further evaluation. The neurologist is going to look at her labs and her x-rays to evaluate and let us know what is the next step. Of course if she can’t be transported without oxygen, and she can’t be intubated because she doesn’t have a proper airway, I’m not sure what that means so until we get there I’m not going to guess.
Here’s what I wish: I wish people had listened to me days ago, a week ago when I first had her at the vet school ER on that Saturday almost 2 weeks ago. They said she was stable. There’s no reason to take her. They thought she was fine. She wasn’t fine, but she wasn’t as bad as she was yesterday. When I took her to the ER on Tuesday and the vet school again dismissed her and said she’s stable, she’s fine we can’t find any reason for why she’s breathing the way she is and nothing is wrong. If they had just listened to me and kept her overnight then maybe internal med would have seen her Wednesday and they would’ve imaged her Wednesday or Thursday and maybe they would’ve found this obstruction and maybe by now she would’ve had surgery instead of crashing. And if her neurologist at the other place where she originally had her MRI when I called two weeks ago to get an appointment to see what was wrong, if they had only listen to me that something was wrong and she needed to be evaluated then we would’ve caught it early enough while she was stable enough and breathing well enough on her own before she was incapable of breathing. If only everyone had listen to me and done what I asked a week ago, days ago, two weeks ago we might still have her and yes she would’ve undergone surgery probably to remove the obstruction and maybe they would’ve said well it’s cancer or you know she needs more radiation-which I would not have done because she’s done with radiation-and maybe she would’ve only had a few more weeks or a few more months but at least she would be home, stable to breathe, comfortable at home. She’d still have a life instead of struggling. And that’s not being selfish. It’s being realistic. 
I would not have chosen to put Betty down, just because she got lame. I would not have chosen to put her down just because she got a tumor. I would not have put her down because she needed radiation. But the kicker is if she had not gone through radiation would she still have had this obstruction?
Without the radiation there is a chance that should would go lame in both legs and lose ability to eliminate on her own. Yet many cats wear diapers and need help and live. And use wheelchairs. Would that have caused other issues and would the nerve have metastasized? There’s so many possibilities that the only choice was to have radiation to try to treat the tumor.
And the outcome is basically the same sort of. It’s possible that one scenario would’ve been she would’ve just gone lame. She would have spent the last month post when she would have received radiation treatment not having received radiation treatment and she would be have been fine. Would she have otherwise been fine for the rest of the summer? Would we have put off these complications or avoided these complications? She would be perfectly fine at least for a while until the tumor got worse and infiltrated her body or metastasized. She would have had a good summer or a difficult summer. Maybe she would have lived risk free until fall? It’s hard to say. I know the CT and the MRI did not pick up whatever this obstruction is so it must be post radiation or during radiation unless it’s something else entirely like something has collapsed because of radiation. Or Something is lodged in the larynx because of radiation. Until she has surgery or a necropsy, we won’t know. I hope this doesn’t happen to another cat of ours. But I do know that we will seek whatever treatment we think a cat needs to prolong a cats life. To treat the problem. Because when this all began, she was perfectly fine. And she is perfectly fine. Her health isn’t failing. She wasn’t dying. Except that she can’t breathe. And when you can’t breathe, a whole host of chemical, physical, biological processes kick in and starts to shut down your body. If she can’t survive off oxygen, then she can’t survive. And that’s where we might be. But I do this again yes. Why? Because she was perfectly fine until she wasn’t. 
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