Hi all. As you know, Matt and I have two Cardigan Corgis, Ollie (almost 5) and Harley (almost 8) that are truly our babies. We've had the second highest level of insurance through Nationwide (Major Medical with Wellness coverage) from the moment we brought them home.

In November of 2024, Ollie was diagnosed with Intervertebral Disc Disease (IVDD) in his cervical (neck) spine. We were lucky that this onset was relatively mild, but required over two weeks of heavy medication and crate rest.

On March 7, 2025, Ollie started acting abnormally without any clear injury or accident. He was in the middle of light play with Matt when he began to cry randomly. After that he was hypersensitive to touch, was distressed and panting, and was shuddering from pain. We were able to get him into our normal vet who was immediately concerned by the lack of responsiveness of his hind legs. Ollie was referred to a Neurologist, and since he was still mobile at that time, suggested that we begin with strict rest and heavy medications again, but to bring him in as soon as his back legs began to drag.

Later that night, Ollie was not standing to either eat or pee and we immediately took him to the Emergency Veterinary Hospital where the referred neurologist was located. He was admitted right away, and by Saturday morning he had lost even more functionality of his back legs, was having accidents, and the decision was made to proceed with an MRI and spinal surgery.

Ollie's MRI showed that most of his spine has developed degenerative issues, but most troubling was that he had herniated discs at his L1-L2, L2-L3 with an ongoing bleed through his spinal column. This appears to be wholly separate from the injury he sustained back in November. The neurological team performed an emergency hemilaminectomy at these two levels on March 8th. Ollie was hospitalized until Tuesday, March 11th. The total bill for his surgery and hospital came to a staggering $14,190.64

Since coming home, Ollie has done very well, but he still has a long road ahead of him. Ollie has to be contained in a pen for 6-8 weeks on strict crate rest on a combination of pain relievers and anxiety medications. Ollie's back legs have started to gain some mobility back after the first week, and he can finally stand for a few seconds at a time. Ollie's only breaks are to go potty outside, and he has to be assisted with a "Help Me Up Harness" where we hold his back end up enough for him to gradually being walking with this assistance (and he does not like harnesses). We will be performing physical therapy with him beginning after his two week follow up on March 25th.

Throughout the process, the one comfort was "thank goodness we have insurance." Until we got our claim back. It turns out despite having the second most comprehensive insurance offered by Nationwide, that the insurance caps the amount of care given in a year for IVDD, regardless if there are separate injuries, or conditions, and out of the $14,190.64, we were only being reimbursed, $4,837. We are submitting a review of the same, but even by my most persuasive review of the terms, given that this is a "contract" issue, we will not being seeing much more from Nationwide.

Looking back, we both know our decision for hospitalization and surgery would not be changed by this outcome. Ollie was in extreme pain and this surgery was his only option to save the functionality of his back legs, and given his young age and how early they were able to intervene, the surgery had a 90% success rate. The hospital was even able to stay below the low end of the estimate we were given at the time of his admission.

While this is not a plea from a place of complete desperation, this situation has obviously put us in an unexpected financial bind. We know that at this moment that many people are experiencing financial stress, and we are not expecting a lot of people to contribute to this fund, but if you're an animal lover who wants to and is able to ease some of this burden we will be eternally grateful.

If you can't contribute, thank you for reading through Ollie's story so far and ask that you just keep your fingers crossed for his recovery. We truly appreciate everyone that has been checking in with us to see how he is progressing.

Thank you!