Hello, I'm Casey, and I just had a very unfortunate summer filled with stress and massive unexpected expenses. At the end of spring, I moved in with my spouse, and shortly thereafter, the eldest cat in the household, Bailey, fell seriously ill. This was determined to be a case of acute pancreatitis, and after a difficult couple of weeks, he made a full recovery. Almost immediately after the resolution of this ordeal, however, my spouse's younger cat, Riley, stopped eating and became severely lethargic. What has followed has been more than a month of veterinary visits, none of which have yet determined an exact cause for what he is dealing with. All this time spent diligently giving Riley the best medical attention and a regimen of six daily doses of medication have finally begun to pay off, and I'm happy to say that he's over his fever and swelling, putting weight back on, and behaving almost as affectionately as he was at the beginning of summer! The ongoing hard work appears to be paying off, but everyone in the household has paid a huge price as a result of all this, and it looks like hard work may not be enough to avoid falling into an endless cycle of medical debt.

The biggest cost was a three-day hospitalization at the emergency vet, which cost $5500, of which I personally paid $3750. I've also spent over $400 on medications, and an additional $700 for testing and treatment during another veterinary visit, putting my personal investment in this matter at $4850 (and it's not even my cat, but I do love him like my own), to say nothing of all the time I lost working on this instead of pursuing money-making opportunities. My spouse and my mother-in-law have both spent an additional $1800 each by my count, plus whatever miscellaneous costs have been incurred throughout the summer. Riley's recovery has been excellent for the past two weeks, but we are still awaiting test results to determine why all this happened and what will need to be done going forward, so even though things look good for him, I can't be sure that there won't be even more expenses to come. Factoring in all of this, as well as the most optimistic possibilities for Riley's ongoing treatment and GoFundMe's cut of what gets raised here, we would need nearly $10,000 to put this all behind us. I'm realistic, though, and I know there's no way we can make that much from this campaign, so my aim instead is to pull us out of the most urgent debts. That way, we'll be subject to the least possible interest charges as I work as hard as humanly possible to cover the bulk of the costs myself. We're hoping to raise a few thousand dollars throughout the rest of the year, just to scrape by without this mess spiraling out of control.

My spouse and I are both queer and trans, my spouse is disabled, and my mother-in-law is elderly and spent much of the summer out of work after a knee surgery. We're all very grateful that you've taken the time to consider what we're facing in the aftermath of some very unpleasant months, and anything you can spare to help us while our beloved cats continue to convalesce will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

(Thankfully, the little guy on the left has been happy and healthy)