Your kitty’s age and tolerance for vet visits have a lot to do with whether to treat with chemo. Personally, I think a cat over 10 probably won’t benefit enough to make them go through it. Kitty needs weekly blood checks, so needs weekly trips to the vet for a couple of months. Average treatment is about 8 weeks, and average remission after treatment is about 8 weeks. Averages. YMMV.
I just let my lymphoma girl go about 3 weeks ago. She was 11, and very, very shy. She would let me handle her, but no one else could touch her. Even though I could do the blood draws myself at home, I would need one other person to help me and I just wouldn’t put her through that. She was diagnosed in May, and all I did was steroid therapy. By the time it was “time” her lymph nodes had normalized significantly during the steroid treatment, but she grew herself a huge abdominal tumor. As soon as she missed a meal, I knew she was ready to go. For her, I have every confidence that I did the right thing. She was “herself” until that last day.
There are so many variables for whether you should treat your cat, and whether to do chemo or steroids or nothing. Will kitty tolerate treatment? Will you? As much as pets are family members, budget constraints are certainly a factor, too.
Personally, I feel the cat/dog/pet should be very young to really benefit from harsh therapies through which they may feel some suffering, but live a fairly long life afterwards. Pets don’t understand treatments that make them uncomfortable - they don’t have the same sense of time and future like people do. Where people can withstand certain amounts of suffering because they know it will be over and life will be better afterwards, pets don’t understand, and every day of suffering is an eternity for them. With that thought, that’s why I think older pets don’t benefit as much, to make them suffer for the possibility of one more year, two more years, all of which may be end-of-life, not the best quality of life anyway due to other age-related issues, for many it’s just prolonging the inevitable.
So, after all that, you know your kitty and based on age and whether there are other issues, and how well kitty will take weekly vet visits, and if there are cost concerns…
Whatever you decide I’m sure will be based on what’s best for kitty and not on human need (for some) to prolong life past good quality. The fact that you’re springing for a pathology report (a whole lot of people don’t) tells me already that you’re willing to go extra steps for your pet!