Please Help Ripley with her surgical expenses

Hello family, friends and fellow animal lovers. I’m Dara and Ripley is our 3-year-old Maine Coon. She is the most affectionate, intelligent, fearless, and loving member we've had join our family and we are asking for help with her surgical expenses.

This all began in July 2021 with Ripley rubbing and scratching her left ear to the point where the entire ear swelled and filled with fluid. We took her to our local veterinarian, and he diagnosed her with an ear infection and an aural hematoma. She was sent home with pain medications and antibiotics with the hematoma surgery scheduled for a week and a half later. While performing the surgery to repair the aural hematoma our vet noticed a polyp/mass deep in her left ear canal. His recommendation was to have her go to a surgeon and have a total ear canal ablation. This is a more in-depth surgery than our vet was able to perform.

We made an appointment with the surgeon to have the ear ablation done in September 2021. This was the soonest they were able to schedule us. In the time between the hematoma surgery and the ear ablation, Ripley continued to battle one ear infection after another. The weekend before her ear ablation surgery, she began losing her balance, not being able to walk in a straight line and falling over. We became alarmed by these new symptoms and took her to our vet for an emergency visit. They gave her an exam and said that yes, she had another severe ear infection and that the balance issues may be due to this. He gave her an antibiotic shot and took a culture of the infection to send to the surgeon along with a full blood work up.

I took her to the pre-op appointment with the surgeon Tuesday morning. After examining Ripley, the surgeon told me that due to the neurological symptoms she felt we needed to take Ripley to a neurologist and have an MRI done to determine exactly where the polyp/mass is. She was very open and honest (which was extremely refreshing) and said that she didn’t feel performing surgery on Ripley at that time would be a good idea and that she needed more information.

We then made an appointment for an MRI and neurology consult for the following week. Ripley had her MRI and due to the neurological issues, they also felt a spinal tap was also necessary. This extremely expensive test cost us the entirety of the money that we had for her surgery. The results were then sent to the surgeon.

The findings were that the polyp/mass was in her middle ear and had begun entering the inner ear. This was causing the continuous infections as the medications were not able to penetrate the inner ear. The result of the spinal tap revealed that she had meningitis which would require 4-6 months of antibiotic treatment to combat the infection.

Her head tilts to the side of the infection most of the day. When she shakes her head, which she does frequently due to the ear infection/polyp/mass, she falls or worse, hits her head on something. This is no way for a family member this special to live, Ripley cannot hope to recover from the meningitis without the surgery.

Please, if you can help monetarily that would be greatly appreciated, if not, could you please share and send healing thoughts to us and Ripley. Thank you very much.