Donation protected
UPDATE: WOOHOO! Thanks to a very generous donor today, our original goal was met! We wait to see if all pledges clear & actually hit our account. Fingers crossed!
Any additional funds raised will be used to pay the first $2800 debt from our regular vet for the first 3.5 wks of her mystery illness, & then purchase pet insurance to provide some protection from this happening again.
OUR STORY:
Hi! My name is Noelle and my girls and I are asking for your immediate help to pay our dog's ER hospital debt by their Oct. 10, 2023 deadline or we face $2200 in interest overnight, back to the original debt, @ nearly 30%!. Debt that we cannot afford after all we've been through the past few years (fires, 13 wks displaced in hotels, Covid shutdown & after-effects, etc).
A few weeks ago, we had 1 week to pay off the balance owed for the ER - $5700. Due to our 1st video, we raised $2250 & were granted a couple weeks extension!!! When we started this GFM we needed to raise the last $3450. As of now, 10/10, it looks like WE DID IT! Amazing!
While we wait to actually receive those payments from GFM, we need to leave this open. Any additional funds will go towards paying off the $2800 from her 3.5 wks long mystery illness & buy pet insurance to protect from getting stuck in this position again.
HOW WE GOT HERE: A year ago, a fun day at the river with our water dog Lunabelle, snowballed over a month when her diarrhea didn't respond to normal treatment, and avalanched into a medical emergency days before her 2nd birthday. She needed life-saving surgery - her intestines had telescoped into each other (called intussusception). They weren't sure if she might have IBD (she doesn't, thank goodness!) or C. difficile (she did) or some other infection causing it.
We had 20 minutes to decide to save her life with an estimate of $12k. They told us she was young & healthy & could likely walk away from this and live a long and healthy life. We couldn't bear to look in our girls' eyes and say we didn't try to save the dog they waited so many years for. I myself suffer badly from IBD and have also nearly died from C. Diff twice - saving Lunabelle was deeply personal.
We have been paying diligently but some work projects have fallen apart or not come together, clients are having their own challenges paying on time, strikes have gone long and had ripple effects, and now in our 6th challenging year out of 8 (affected by 2 fires, Covid, post-Covid, a near lethal freak kitchen accident before that- we've really been through it!), cutting every corner we can, with housing and gas prices ($5.70+/gal!?) soaring, we are struggling. $2200 in extra debt would really put us in a bad place.
I tried solving this from every other angle - at the time we were offered the financing @ 0%, we asked for the 24 month program because we knew we could manage that, but the clinic would only give us 12. I asked to refinance or open a new account with new terms and was told they can’t. I asked for an extension both with the hospital & the bank - the hospital didn't return my calls. Thankfully, we were granted a small extension.
PLEASE help us get there and put this nightmare behind us! Any small amount helps. And also please help us share this fundraiser to your social networks so we can get there by Care Credit's deadline.
You can contribute to our GoFundMe here, or if you prefer, you can Venmo Noelle-Mullen-2, or DM for Zelle information.
We chose life. Help us put this behind us & move on. THANK YOU!!!!
Here's a video where my girls and Lunabelle explain it more charmingly than I do: https://youtu.be/78Gl-7XqxyU?si=wt3x30BYMoQrY_hi
PS Look at her now, how could we not save her?
Organizer
Noelle Mullen
Organizer
Petaluma, CA