Urgent help needed - Loki’s life saving treatment

We need your help in funding the treatment to help save Loki. Our insurance isn’t enough to cover it all and we are struggling to raise all the funds ourselves.

Loki is our beautiful boy, our 6 year old Doberman, our fur baby child and a massive part of our family. He has been diagnosed with Meningoencephalitis of Unknown Aetiology (MUA). In simple terms.. he has inflammatory brain disease.

It all started last Thursday. In a space of an hour Loki went from being a bit clumsy to completely blind. It was difficult to watch and we managed to get him seen by the emergency Vet an hour later. Unfortunately, the Vet believed that it was neurological and that he needed to be seen by a specialist and a referral was made.

We managed to get him seen the following morning at Willows Veterinary Centre. After initial tests it was clear that something more sinister was going on. He then had further blood tests a MRI and a spinal tap (fluid taken from the spine). The MRI confirmed their suspicions of inflammation of the brain and we waited 24 hrs for the Spinal tap results before diagnosis was confirmed. Loki is very poorly and needs aggressive treatment. They had already started him on a high dose of steroids and he needs chemotherapy, which he started his first round later that afternoon. The team at Wiilows have been amazing and kept us fully informed at every step. Lokis Vet Francesca, was pleased to inform us that just after 1 treatment he was showing some response in his right eye!

Monday afternoon Loki was home!!! He has about 20% vision in his right eye.. and what a difference that 20% has made! Amazing!! Loki is very confident and able to navigate around the house with ease. He was so happy to see us all and be home!! Anyone who knows Loki, knows how needy he is and how much fuss he likes …and boy he has lapped it up!

Loki is booked in for his next round of Chemo on the 10th December and is continuing steroid tablets at home. He unfortunately is experiencing bouts of incontinence, which is a side effect of the steroids. These will be reduced very gradually.

In the short period of time at the vets his bill so far has come to £5995 (not including his next/ongoing chemo). His insurance covers £7k, although we are liable for 15% of that so they only cover £5950.

The Vet has put together a treatment plan, depending on how he responds/tolerates it all, which will consist of between 16 and 20 rounds of chemo. At £750 a go = £12-£15k!! On top of that his steroids have come to £75 for just 25 days worth (vet is helping us find a way to source these cheaper). He will need another MRI in a year (which is in excess of £3.1k plus) and blood tests along the way.

We have worked out what we can afford and the bottom line is… we just can’t afford it all on our own.. we can’t wait until the insurance kicks in again and even that is not enough..we need help!!

It has been a very emotional week and there has been so many tears! The reality is …there is no guarantee this will cure him. What we do know is that in a short amount time our beautiful boy is showing an amazing improvement! We do know we caught it early! We do know that the best chance of success is fulfilling the treatment plan…We don’t want to put Loki through treatment that will be detrimental to him being him. We don’t want him to suffer unnecessarily..We know we may potentially have to deal with difficult decisions along the way! But at this moment in time we feel confident that he can fight this! He has shown us already that he is fighting this!!!

Please help us give him the chance he deserves xx

Thank you so much for reading. Xx