My name is Merrie
Let me introduce myself... I'm Merrie the rescue cat. I'm 14 years old and I've got cancer: a tumour in my mouth. It was about 4 cm across and was preventing me from eating as it stopped me from opening my mouth. It couldn't be surgically removed and chemotherapy is not effective for this kind of cancer. Therefore my family took me to a clinic for radiotherapy. For two weeks I had a session every working day.
In order to stop me wasting away the doctors put a tube into my oesophagus so that I could be fed through it. Before they did that I had lost about 1 kilo, nearly a quarter of my body weight: I don't recommend this as a slimming strategy!. Because I hadn't eaten for so long, my stomach had shrunk and I could only be fed 8ml of food five times a day. 
However I soon adapted and now I'm getting fed 40 ml six times a day. 
That feels so much better: I've gained nearly 400 grams over the last few days.
The tumour has already shrunk quite a lot as you can see in the photos of before and after. In order to slow down its growth I'm on a whole bunch of medicines. One advantage of the tube is that I don't have to swallow them: they can be squirted directly into the tube along with my food.
The doctors warned that I might get a sore eye and as you can see, they were right! I have a check up every week so I have some medicine for it. And now I've got a runny nose which is making me a bit miserable.
My mum and dad started this website. And on facebook and on twitter they created a page for me. You can get there by clicking on the cat and bird below. Please like and follow them, so that you can see how I progress...
