Hi everyone!

It’s Ziggy’s mom, Kayla. I wasn’t going to create a GoFundMe because times are really hard on everyone right now, and I felt weird about it. A few of my friends encouraged me to create one so that the people who want to support us monetarily, can do so. Please please please don’t feel obligated to donate monetarily. Sharing this GoFundMe is appreciated and means the world to us. All the funds donated will go directly to Zig’s vet bills/medications.

Ziggy began having bleeding from his right nostril this February. We took him to our vet, and they ran every test they possibly could - all they found were a few types of bacterial infections, so we got him on a few weeks of antibiotics, and that seemed to stop his bleeding. From March through September, I would sometimes notice him have clear snot come out of that right nostril, but chalked it up to his ever-present allergies. Cut to late September, the nose bleeds started back. We ran back to our vet and they said they’d done all they could, and referred us to IndyVet to do more diagnostics. September 30th, we took him to IndyVet to do biopsies, CT scans, a rhinoscopy with a camera, and more fungal cultures. At this stage, he began showing pain. He hadn’t had any pain in the past, so we knew whatever it was, it had progressed. The vet gave two options pre-diagnostics: cancerous tumor or fungal infection.

Thankfully, his biopsies came back NEGATIVE for cancer! So, that leaves a fungal infection. We’re actually still waiting on the results from those cultures, but from the CT scans and the camera visualization, they believe it to be aspergillosis. The best way to treat this infection is to combine oral anti-fungal meds, and do a sinus/nasal flush of topical anti-fungal meds. This means he has to have a trephination surgery (drilling a hole into his right sinus), and apply the topical meds. They’ll need to leave this mixture in his nose/sinus for up to an hour to make sure all areas affected can be reached. That surgery is tomorrow morning (10/21). I’m a nervous wreck and just want his pain to be gone.

As for the costs of everything, the initial procedures at IndyVet came out to: $4376. The trephination surgery will be $2477. With these cases, the vet let me know that the trephination and flush sometimes needs to be done more than once. I’m hoping this is a one and done thing, but we won’t know until a month or so after this surgery.

Thank you if you’ve read this far (sorry for the short story). Zig is my baby and I’m so appreciative for anything you may be able to help with - be it money, thoughts, shares etc. It takes a village, and I’m so thankful for mine.