Feeling Lucky...

My husband and I recently discovered that we are "lucky" people. And when most people hear that word, they think good luck. People in general assume luck is good and karma is bad. Neither is true. Both luck and karma are neutral - it's the adjective placed before it that defines how that luck or karma behaves.
We have bad luck - LOTS of it. We're overflowing with bad luck - it's almost comical at this point in our lives. Don't believe me? Well, we played the lotto and lost - shocking, so did about a billion other people. We had a cat who had FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis), an incredibly rare cat disease that our vet had only seen once in her 30-year career as a Veterinarian. It affects about 1 in every 5,000-10,000 cats and is always fatal. If that were't enough - us having one cat out of nine being "special," we just found out we have another "special" cat. Onyx is even more rare.
Apparently, about 1 in 1,000,000 - yes, one in a million - cats have a genetic abnormality that causes them to react to foreign bodies entering their bodies. So, when you take your cat to get their shots, this one extremely rare cat reacts - badly. This phenomena is called Rabies Carcinoma. This form of cancer received its name from the spot where it typically reacts on the cat (because it's almost mandatory to have animals vaccinated against rabies, or you risk getting sued if your pet bites someone and you don't have that vaccine). After about a decade of research, Veterinarians discovered that it isn't just the rabies vaccine that causes this - it's anything that enters your cat's body. And just like FIP - there's no cure. However, unlike FIP, Rabies Carcinoma isn't as fast acting. There are things we can do to help Onyx, and we can remove the tumor if it starts bothering him or starts growing. If we do have the surgery, we risk the carcinoma spreading to any spot on his body that had an insertion - so the injection site for the anesthesia, the I.V. site, and 4-inch incision to remove the tumor. He is being monitored for the next three months to see if he continues to do well, or if the tumor progresses.
My husband's response to me after we found this out - "I'd have never gotten the rabies vaccine if I knew there was that risk. Of course one of our cats would have it. This is bullshit."
I couldn't agree more.

For more information:
Pet MD