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On June 28th, my sweet cat Judy hit her left eye on something in the house. I’m not exactly sure on what, why it happened, or how but we have a feeling her already impaired vision from a previous eye injury played a role.
In this accident- her eye ruptured. Fluid from the anterior chambers of her eye began painfully leaking through the different damaged layers of her eye and she was at risk of her eye collapsing and losing it completely.
I quickly took her to the emergency vet to get her stabilized. They described how cats can generally heal themselves when this sort of thing happens when assisted by medicine. Judy’s treatment plan required 5 different medications applied up to 4 times a day including pills, oral liquids, eye drops, eye ointments, and of course a cone.
In the following week and a half the vet requested to see her two additional times to assess her progress. Although her eye thankfully showed no signs of infection or excessive inflammation the doctor was not seeing the level of healing that we’d hoped for. The thin epithelial membrane now covering Judy’s injury hole was very thin and delicate because her body was not recruiting additional blood vessels or scar tissue to repair the injury site. This led to two more painful and horrific ruptures of her eye following the initial trauma in which despite our best efforts to protect the healing ulcer it was not strong enough to withstand even very minor pressure.
On the vets recommendation I took Judy to the ophthalmologic specialist at UC Davis Veterinarian Hospital on July 9th. After seeing multiple doctors there, they confirmed that her eye was not healing sufficiently and that if left alone to heal with medical assistance as we had been doing- multiple painful ruptures were likely and the ongoing trauma of that could lead to total eye loss.
On July 10th Judy had a procedure in which healthy tissue with lots of blood vessels called the conjunctiva was grafted across her eye over her ulcer, providing her the much needed support and blood circulation necessary to truly heal the ocular wound. This required two overnight stays, anesthesia, and other costly surgical procedures.
On July 11th Judy came home and although it took her a little while to feel safe again, she is now resting comfortably. Now it's time to start the healing process all over again- this time with a much greater chance of success. It will still be another 3-4 weeks until she will get to finally take her cone off and stop taking medications.
And that's basically where we are now. The medical bills were daunting from the start, with over $700 in bills just from Judy’s first emergency visits and prescriptions. Multiple vet visits that followed totaled $300 more. The final bill from her surgery at UC Davis was over $2,000.
This whole ordeal has been very difficult for me to manage alone. I’ve had to take a lot of time off of work to administer her medications, take her to appointments, and nurse her back to health. With student loan payments, car insurance, living expenses, etc I haven’t been able to save much since graduating last year so that’s why I’ve made this page.
I never expected anything like this to happen to Judy so unexpectedly and it’s made me realized I was perhaps unprepared for the full range of pet ownership emergencies.
I am asking for help from all of you to help cover the cost of Judy’s medical bills so that I can minimize any debt I’ll acquire covering the remaining balance.
Judy and I are very grateful to have already felt a lot of love from the people that know and care for us. Thank you so much everyone.
In this accident- her eye ruptured. Fluid from the anterior chambers of her eye began painfully leaking through the different damaged layers of her eye and she was at risk of her eye collapsing and losing it completely.
I quickly took her to the emergency vet to get her stabilized. They described how cats can generally heal themselves when this sort of thing happens when assisted by medicine. Judy’s treatment plan required 5 different medications applied up to 4 times a day including pills, oral liquids, eye drops, eye ointments, and of course a cone.
In the following week and a half the vet requested to see her two additional times to assess her progress. Although her eye thankfully showed no signs of infection or excessive inflammation the doctor was not seeing the level of healing that we’d hoped for. The thin epithelial membrane now covering Judy’s injury hole was very thin and delicate because her body was not recruiting additional blood vessels or scar tissue to repair the injury site. This led to two more painful and horrific ruptures of her eye following the initial trauma in which despite our best efforts to protect the healing ulcer it was not strong enough to withstand even very minor pressure.
On the vets recommendation I took Judy to the ophthalmologic specialist at UC Davis Veterinarian Hospital on July 9th. After seeing multiple doctors there, they confirmed that her eye was not healing sufficiently and that if left alone to heal with medical assistance as we had been doing- multiple painful ruptures were likely and the ongoing trauma of that could lead to total eye loss.
On July 10th Judy had a procedure in which healthy tissue with lots of blood vessels called the conjunctiva was grafted across her eye over her ulcer, providing her the much needed support and blood circulation necessary to truly heal the ocular wound. This required two overnight stays, anesthesia, and other costly surgical procedures.
On July 11th Judy came home and although it took her a little while to feel safe again, she is now resting comfortably. Now it's time to start the healing process all over again- this time with a much greater chance of success. It will still be another 3-4 weeks until she will get to finally take her cone off and stop taking medications.
And that's basically where we are now. The medical bills were daunting from the start, with over $700 in bills just from Judy’s first emergency visits and prescriptions. Multiple vet visits that followed totaled $300 more. The final bill from her surgery at UC Davis was over $2,000.
This whole ordeal has been very difficult for me to manage alone. I’ve had to take a lot of time off of work to administer her medications, take her to appointments, and nurse her back to health. With student loan payments, car insurance, living expenses, etc I haven’t been able to save much since graduating last year so that’s why I’ve made this page.
I never expected anything like this to happen to Judy so unexpectedly and it’s made me realized I was perhaps unprepared for the full range of pet ownership emergencies.
I am asking for help from all of you to help cover the cost of Judy’s medical bills so that I can minimize any debt I’ll acquire covering the remaining balance.
Judy and I are very grateful to have already felt a lot of love from the people that know and care for us. Thank you so much everyone.