My mother was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma a few weeks ago, she has an 11.6 centimeter mass on her left kidney. She was hospitalized last weekend because they gave her morphine for pain, it dropped her blood pressure extemely low. That is when we found out the cancer had spread to other organs (liver,pancreas, lymph nodes and stomach) the doctors said she would only make it a few weeks to a month. That is when I looked into this cancer center, her insurance has been approved and they want to schedule her flight asap. I just want to know if anyone out there has had good results with ctca? I have a friend who goes with her mother who had breast cancer metasis to her liver and bone who goes to ctca and she said they were great. Are they as wonderful as my friends mom says?
My mom is also doing better now, she’s home from the hospital and she’s not as weeks and she’s eating . My mom says she’s ready to fight this.

I have an 18 yo cat. He has serious hyperthyroid, high blood pressure, arthritis, and his vision is bad. His kidneys are OK but on the downward slide, and his liver is iffy.

Every time I go to the vet they say, "Well, he’s not getting better. Let’s adjust his medications, and bring him back in 3 weeks–plus I’d like to add another medication." These visits and tests run me close to 0, and of course they never have a clue what the medications cost. I’ve been through this several times now.

Well, he’s not going to get "better"–he’s 18! What will all these adjustments really achieve, besides costing a fortune and denying me the chance to really deal psychologically with the fact that my cat is slowly dying. But they only write the prescriptions for a few weeks at a time, so I have to go back.

Can I/should I say I don’t want to do any more blood panels, and insist they just renew the prescriptions he’s on for some reasonable period like 6 months?
How can I say this? His quality of life is still OK, I just want to pick a medication level and stick with that until it’s time to put him down, and just monitor things like his weight to see how it’s working.
I didn’t say I wanted to put him down, I said his quality of life is OK now. But they’re talking long-term treatments on a cat who doesn’t have a long-term ahead. His numbers don’t have to be perfect if he’s not going to live long enough for it to matter.

I have somewhat high blood pressure right on the edge of being stage one hypertension. I don’t want to take medication because A.) I don’t have insurance at the moment and B.) Blood pressure medication is bad for the liver.

So the question is: how can I lower my blood pressure without using medication? Thanks!