Hello, my name is Mikki Patterson and I am raising money on behalf of my fiancé, Alexa Konowal. Our beloved cat Lady Byrd was recently hospitalized due to fluid around her lungs and heart. The cost of this was high and unexpected. The urgent care was over $500 and the hospitalization was over $1,300. We are asking for our family and friends to help us off-set this cost. We are fortunate enough to be able to put the money on a credit card, but like most mellinials, we are already struggling with debt. Please only give if you are able!

More Details: On Saturday Alexa and I were preparing to leave on a week long trip to a cabin in Lake Hope State Park which we already paid for and cannot get refunded. On that same day we noticed our beloved cat Lady Byrd was hiding in her cubby and acting lethargic. She has had issues with oral infections and possible undiagnosed asthma, so we knew we needed to at least talk to a vet about it. We made an appointment with her regular vet for when we returned from our trip and told our cat sitter about her symptoms. The next day, Sunday the 4th, Lady Byrd was acting even more lethargic and having trouble breathing. She was still eating and drinking, but out of an abundance of caution we made and appointment for her at the urgent care vet at noon, Acute Care in West Chester (especially since we were planning to leave for a week later that day). The urgent care vet recommended we get her an ex-ray to determine the cause of her labored breathing. Although the cost of this and urgent care was very high, $500+, we had to find out right away due to our plans to leave on vacation. Unfortunately , the ex-ray showed that she had a build up of fluid around her lungs. This was most likely caused by heart failure or cancer. They referred us to an animal hospital to have the fluid drained and gave us a care quote for hospitalization plus treatment that was $980- $1,200 on top of the $500 we already owed the urgent care. But she is our baby and we could not let her suffer. They said not draining the fluid would most certainly result in death. At this point she started open mouth breathing which is a sign that she could not breathe so she was taken back to be stabilized. After they stabilized her, we drove her to the Hospital, Care Center Cincinnati. We were then in the hospital with her until 6pm. We left her there to recover and returned to pick her up at 8am. They said she was feeling better after the fluid was driained but that she had to have fluid drained around her lungs and her heart. The fluid around the lungs was clear and the fluid around the heart was bloody. After analyzing the fluid, today the vet believes is cancer. More testing is needed in order for the type and stage of cancer to be diagnosed. But the prognosis is not good and at this point we had paid $500 for the urgent care and the hospitalization ended up costing more than the quote at a little over $1,300.