Rest In Peace Cookie...

My name Is Roger Forbes. I’ve done many GoFundMe fundraisers for others who need help. Unfortunately this time I'm the one who needs help. My wife and I are huge animal lovers. We have a house full of rescue cats, find homes for dogs, rescue ducks, and rehab opossums. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

This fundraiser is about our opossum Cookie, who passed away on Friday 6/2/23 and the huge veterinary bill I had to pay. We rescued Cookie 2 years ago on 6/29/21. She weighed 45 grams. Her mother had passed away under my neighbor's deck. Cookie had been in her deceased mother's pouch for a week and finally crawled out from there, dehydrated and sick. My neighbor saw a stray cat messing with her, shooed the cat away, and immediately called me to come to rescue her. Previously, I would bring orphaned animals to the local wildlife center and make donations, but every single animal I brought to them died. Not one survivor. I soon learned why. The wildlife center has hundreds of orphaned opossums right now (I heard 600 currently), and not enough staff to take care of them. They euthanize the small ones that require tube feeding. So my wife and I decided to give this orphan the individual attention and care it needed. I’m a member of the Opossum Society of America (yes, that's a thing), the Opossum Medical and Diet Help Facebook page, and several other groups that publish all of the necessary information to rehabilitate, and care for them.

Cookie responded so well to all of the medicine and treatments that we gave her. She was finally a healthy little girl. She became a local opossum ambassador over the next 2 years, and we taught so many people about opossums and how harmless, affectionate, misunderstood, intelligent, and amazing they are. She received the best care, nutrition, and love we could give her.

She started getting sick a few weeks ago. Her appetite started to diminish, she slept a lot, and she was losing weight. Opossums can't just go to any veterinary office like a cat or dog but we were concerned that she needed immediate medical care. I finally ended up networking with an amazing group of like-minded animal lovers who rescue, foster, and rehabilitate opossums, raccoons, skunks, etc. From there I was referred to an amazing veterinarian in West Palm Beach who is an opossum lover. She made an immediate appointment with me for the following day, and off I went.

Unfortunately, I am now disabled (torn shoulder, had surgery on 1/4/23, tore it again on 2/13/23) and then a failed spinal surgery on 2/15/23 and an emergency spinal surgery (staph and bone infection after the first surgery) on 4/13/23. I'm unable to work, and I'm waiting on approval for disability so we're not in a good place financially. But I couldn't let Cookie suffer and was sure she had a few years left in her. The estimate for the diagnostic portion alone was $940.28, which I paid. Then they discovered that she had pyometra (severe infection of the uterus) and needed an emergency hysterectomy. That estimate was $4,344.35. I approved that proposal as well and paid it with my credit card. It wasn't a fiscally responsible thing to do, but we love her and I made the decision with my heart, not my calculator.

Cookie survived the surgery, woke up, was active, and ate a meal for the first time in a week. We were so optimistic, but then we were informed that something was wrong. She was now bleeding in her abdominal cavity and they couldn't figure out from where or stop the bleeding. On Friday, June 2 at 5 am, I received a call that Cookie was not going to survive and that euthanizing her was the only choice at that point. We were devastated.

A few hours later, I received another invoice for $2,755.56. I called the vet's office, and they informed me that what I had paid in both instances was 75% of the estimate, and Cookie's care and procedures surpassed those amounts. They agreed to lower that invoice to $2,314.56.

So Cookie didn't survive, and I had to pay a $7,599.99 veterinary bill. My wife has not stopped crying for 2 days. She adored Cookie and she is devastated. I had to try and save Cookie, and it failed.

Cookie had some amazing veterinarians care for her, and they did everything they could, around the clock, from the moment she arrived at the facility. One, in particular, didn't charge us anything for her work with Cookie, and she was there on her day off and was with Cookie from 11 am to 9:30 pm (and then went back post-surgery with food for Cookie from her home. The problem is that 24-hour veterinary clinics like this give state-of-the-art diagnostics and treatment, but their rates are very high. I didn't know where else to go and this seemed to be Cookie's only chance.

I am uncomfortable asking for help from anyone, even though my focus throughout my entire life has been to help people and animals. But now I desperately need help. If you could please donate to help us with this veterinary bill it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much for reading this and for your consideration.

Rest In Peace Cookie. We Love You and Miss You

Roger & Jessica Forbes