Ben Affleck, The Cat, Breathes Easy After Cancer Treatment

Ben’s recent travails, and his successful treatment at Virginia Tech’s Animal Cancer Care and Research Center in Roanoke for an aggressive throat cancer that nearly shut off his breathing, might be worthy of a movie script from his namesake actor and filmmaker.

It started at the end of March, when Ben stopped eating and his breathing turned labored. Daniel Muehlman, Ben’s owner, took his 14-year-old yellow short-haired cat to an emergency veterinary clinic near his home in Charleston, West Virginia, but X-rays turned up little. 

An ultrasound at another animal hospital finally caught the problem: a mass in the throat, closing off his windpipe. 

“When they went to put the intubation tube in before the ultrasound, they saw the tumor,” Muehlman said “He couldn’t eat solid foods, went to wet foods, then had a lot of trouble breathing and wheezing, and couldn’t cough.”

Expedited radiation treatment

Ben arrived in critical condition at Animal Cancer Care and Research Center, one of three teaching hospitals of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. His airway almost completely obstructed. 

“There was very little room for the tumor to progress further before his ability to breathe could become completely compromised,” said Beatrix Manning, the animal cancer center’s chief medical officer and a clinical assistant professor of radiation oncology at the veterinary college. “We needed to establish a diagnosis and begin treatment as quickly and safely as possible.”

Rather than wait on the multi-day process typically required to plan radiation treatment, Manning’s team performed a CT scan to stage the tumor and, under that same anesthesia, delivered Ben’s first dose of radiation using a hand-calculated plan. 

The goal was to shrink the tumor quickly enough to reopen his airway, even before the test results came back confirming her suspected diagnosis: laryngeal lymphoma, cancer of the lymphocytes.

“Lymphoma is particularly well suited to this type of situation because it is one of the most radiation-sensitive cancers we treat,” Manning said. Lymphoma cells tend to die off rapidly once irradiated, rather than waiting for a later attempt at cell division, which is how many solid tumors respond.

Ben’s case bore that out almost immediately. “Within a day his breathing was noticeably better,” Manning said. “By the following week, when he returned for his second radiation treatment, he was essentially back to normal.”

On the road to recovery

Four more weekly treatments followed. Ben tolerated the full course without significant side effects, aside from losing the fur around his neck for a couple of weeks — Muehlman still laughs about the “pretty interesting mullet” that left behind before it grew back in.

Muehlman made the three-and-a-half-hour trip from Charleston to Roanoke for Ben’s treatments. He said the center staff worked with his schedule and gave him a clear picture of what to expect, including cost, from the start.

“She gave me great explanations of what they could do and how their program worked,” Muehlman said of Manning. “In the initial assessment, they even gave me a ballpark figure for the total cost. I was pleased with that too. Overall, they took great care of him.” 

Today, Ben has climbed back from a low of 10 pounds to about 16, and Muehlman describes him as “quite vibrant, happy. Screams at me all the time.”

Lymphoma often recurs after treatment. Muehlman and the cancer center team are in a wait-and-see mode, monitoring Ben through his regular check-ups. For now, though, Ben Affleck, the cat, has a new lease on life.

About that name: Muehlman once had three cats with a former partner, one of them named Matt Damon. When he later brought home another cat, the choice felt obvious: “Why don’t we go ahead and name this one Ben Affleck?”

For Manning, Ben’s case is a reminder of the capabilities of radiation therapy offered at the animal cancer center.

“Cases like Ben’s,” Manning said, “demonstrate that, in the right situation, radiation therapy doesn’t just provide long-term cancer control — it can have an immediate and potentially life-saving impact on a patient’s life.”