Easing Our Burden: Pet Medical Expenses

Our family has been through so much in the last few years with our pets.

Without going into too much unwanted detail, in December 2023, my wiener dog Oti fell off the couch and had to have emergency surgery on Christmas Day. We paid for surgery (of course) and a handful of months later (in April 2024), we made the tough decision to put let her go. She was slowing down, and the surgery took so much out of her. She lived until 15 and had such a beautiful life.

Binx (our 1.5 year old kitten) had been dealing with an abscess for about 7-9 months. We were in and out of the vets office, and we ended up opting for exploratory surgery to remove the infection they found. Unfortunately, the infection had spread throughout his chest & lungs, and they didn’t feel comfortable waking him up from surgery. That was one of the hardest days of my life when I got that call.

We lost Binx in July of 2024.

Fast forward to Crix, we brought him to a doggy daycare in November of 2022 and he ended up getting kennel cough which greatly weakened his immune system. He seemed to get better, but then earlier in 2023 he got worse again. We spent over $20k on tests like trachea washes, blood work, fungal tests, antibiotics, x rays, etc etc over the next 2 years. We brought him to every specialist we could find just for the hope of someone finding out what was wrong. About 2 months ago we found an incredible doctor in happy valley who started his long term care plan. We put him on an intense antibiotic course and steroids.

He seemed to be doing better, so much so that we even brought him on a vacation with us. He was acting super happy, enjoying the sun, eating drinking everything. When we got home, about 4 days later he started to have labored breathing so we rushed him into the hospital. It was like a nightmare all over again, and we barely had time to recover from Binx passing.

Crix’s lungs were deteriorating and he couldn’t be off of oxygen. We made the horribly hard decision to let him go. He passed peacefully in my arms on April 1st.

The last 12 months has been so painful for us, and so draining. We even sold our house last April to help pay off care credit debt from Oti’s surgery, and then months later we were crippled with Binx’s medical bills. We finally started feeling semi caught up, and then Crix.

I absolutely hate asking for help, it feels so demoralizing. My husband is working overtime at his job, and I’m shooting, dog grooming, instacarting, and doing content creation. We are doing everything possible to stay afloat as best we can but as most everyone knows, it’s tough. We’re again to a place where we are drowning in care credit debt and still grieving the passing of 3 beloved pets.

I have had so many people ask how they can help and although I don’t expect it, I appreciate everything from kind words to donations.

Thank you for listening.