Recurrence after two years, almost to the day. In Feb 2018 my 1-1/2 year old male cat started limping. His leg was inflamed. We treated it as a fractured bone, but that wasn't it. By May he developed open wounds on the top and bottom of the leg. He was lethargic at this point. He actually slept on the vet's scale! He was still purring at times. THen I noticed that his wounds were bleeding. After that he quickly developed new lesions/tumours that would explode and bleed. The main thing to look out for is hairloss - he would lose his fur in a patch and within a few days a wound would appear. He had them on his paws, the back of the hind legs, very close to the eye, and another on his nose. He was finally diagnosed with Blastomycosis dermatitidis. We put him on Sporanox (itraconazole) and he was fine. 2 years later, in February again, he was limping. And now it is May, just like 2 years ago, and he is missing some fur on his back, and we can see a lesion forming. We will be off to the vets tomorrow. At least this time we know what to look for. The recurrence is a bit troubling. We don't know if it is a relapse or a new recurrence.

I took my cat Forest to the vet because he had a lump on his back foot/ankle that was causing a limp. He’d also lost 2 of his 11 pounds. He’d also had a lump on his tail a few months earlier that the same vet was unconcerned about....hmmmmm. Vet used a needle to try to draw up fluid, to see if the ankle lump was a cyst, and got nothing. Sent what blew out of the dry needle to path, and Dx came back as ‘suspected sarcoma’. Yikes! They did a lung X-ray, which was positive and told me, due to the ‘metastasis’, all we should do is keep him comfortable, give him steroids, and they gave him a few months. I was devastated, it happened so quickly...so, I took him for a second opinion. This vet listened to me, heard that I just needed more information, to be sure I was doing the right thing. She did a biopsy of the ankle...and it came back as Blastomycosis, not cancer. Rainbows appeared. Treatment wasn’t easy—we put in a feeding tube, because he didn't want to eat, but he tolerated it very well, and, that made it very easy to give him the itraconazole. I slept with him in a guest room for a month, so I could feed him during the night...and spend special time. I have a wonderful, ‘allergic’ husband who understood completely why I had to sleep with my baby :) Lump went away, appetite returned, kitty was alive and well long after first vet would have had him die of undiagnosed blasto. Follow up...a little over a year later, I noticed Forrest limping...and felt that lump on his ankle again. Xrays showed nothing in his lungs (whew), but looked like the fungus was trying to make another run. He’s back on the Meds, this time just orally— since he was not as sick, he’s not lost his appetite, so no need for feeding tube. He tolerates treatment well, still a happy kitty....just hates me for 2 minutes every evening when it’s dosing time...but, the lump and limp are gone. We’re monitoring his liver enzymes, and urine (for blasto). Once the urine is clean, we’ll continue meds for ~another month, just to be safe. Still not sarcoma! This is not a common disease in cats and apparently easy to miss. PLEASE be sure to get those second opinions!