Hi friends!
Most of you know me as a cat person, so it might come as a shock that it is actually my dog, Digby, that has my whole heart and we could really use some help right now.
Digby (full name Sir Digby Chicken Ceaser) is our (soon to be) 13 year old Shih Tzu mix. He is our most senior resident dog and unquestionably the favorite. After noticing a lump in the back of his mouth, Digby was diagnosed with oral melanoma. Oral melanoma is an aggressive type of cancer that spreads quickly, and without treatment, the average survival time is only a couple of months. This was a devasting diagnosis but there have been a lot of lucky breaks along the way. We got REALLY lucky by finding the tumor super early and staging showed no signs of cancer anywhere else in his body! And we were super fortunate to find an oncologist with availability to start treatment immediately. We came up with a treatment plan that includes radiation and the melanoma vaccine; the radiation is used to kill the cancerous tumor and the melanoma vaccine is used to prevent cancer from returning - he will get 4 doses of each. Digby has already received 3 of his radiation treatments and it's going great; the tumor is shrinking and he doesn't have any adverse side effects. Tomorrow (10/6), he will get his final dose of radiation and his first vaccine. His oncologist feels optimistic about his prognosis and how his treatment is going...in her words, "We'll get rid of this cancer and he can die from something else."
It looks like we got the whole beat cancer part handled, but the price tag that comes with it has me here asking for help. Treating cancer is expensive! So far, we've spent $4,131 on diagnostics and staging and $5,925 on radiation treatment. The melanoma vaccine is $1,162 per shot and he will get 4 of those. Those big ticket items combined with some checkups and meds needed along the way will have us spending a little over $15,000 in total. I am making this Go FundMe for $5,000 because that's the amount left over after maxing out credit cards.
So if I've ever done anything for you that made you say, "I owe you one!" I've come to (quite literally) cash in. This is such a ridiculous amount of money, like it almost seems imaginary that we are spending it but it's the price the vets have come up with to save Digby's life, so it's what we've got to pay. And we sincerely appreciate any help we can get.
