We had a brief scare with Corey just last week.
As you know, we monitor his respiration carefully twice a day.
One morning, an employee noticed that he was breathing at about twice his normal rate.
Since they tend to hide their infirmities so well, we don’t like to take any chances with potential breathing difficulties (since the problem is often much worse than it appears).

None of our vets were availabe, so we took Corey to a local vet we use.
She did an x-ray of Corey’s chest and saw two relevant items:

• The mass in his chest was not visible.
• His heart was somewhat enlarged.

The vet suspected that the steroids Corey was on were responsible for shrinking the mass (which is very good), as well for causing the enlarged heart (which is a know danger of long-term steroid use).
There was no fluid in his chest and no metastatis of the presumed cancer, so she felt sure that the increased respiratory rate was due to the heart.

So, we immediately cut Corey’s steroid dosage in half, since it had clearly done its job on the mass.
We expect that Corey’s heart will retun to normal size as time goes on.

So, what started as an apparent dire situation may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Since then, Corey’s breathing has returned to his normal rate and he appears to be his old, sweet self.