Support Dax's Fight Against Kidney Cancer

Hi, my name is Mel and I am raising funds for my little baby Dax, my 13-year-old sweetie pie that came into my apartment one day and never left.

On June 19th, while I was away visiting family and friends in Florida, my partner Kevin arrived in our Atlanta apartment to find puddles of bile and blood and Dax leaned up against the wall, struggling to breathe.

This wasn’t the first scare we had with Dax. Back in late January, an extremely similar situation occurred. I was out of the house working, and Kevin came home finding blood and Dax in pain. We, of course, immediately took him to our nearest emergency vet, Blue Pearl Hospital.

They ran x-rays and blood work and concluded that he must’ve just had something weird to eat. This all sounded wrong to me because Dax has always been a very smart and picky cat; he never ate anything that wasn’t the same three canned foods he’d always had.

They sent us home with medicine to coat his tummy, and within a couple of days, he was back to normal. We thought nothing of it, put the $790 vet visit charge on my care credit card, and carried on.

I had never thought to buy Dax any sort of pet insurance because since I rescued him back in Tampa five years ago, he’d always been a healthy cat. Maybe out of hopefulness and ignorance that nothing bad would ever happen to him and he would live forever (even when researching various plans after the first incident), I never pulled the trigger.

Almost 5 months later, he went back to Blue Pearl and this time they performed an ultrasound. They found an over 2 cm mass in his left kidney, and his right kidney wasn’t looking great either.

Back in Tampa, adding fuel to the flame, my grandfather suddenly passed away from lung cancer and Alzheimer’s. Scared out of my mind and hundreds of miles away, without thinking twice, I increased my limit and put it all on my care credit card. I paid for all 3 days of stay, treatments, and medication, a grand total of $4,410 after we checked him out.

At the time they wanted to take a sample of the mass, Dax’s platelets were too low and he was overall too weak to take a sample without major complications. The radiologist wouldn’t be in again until the following week.

We made an appointment for June 26th, where they informed us that the procedure to check for cancer would be another $1,300. Thanks to help from all of you a week later we were able to get a sample of the mass.

However, now we know for certain Dax has sarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that is an attacking his left kidney.

The vet oncologist we have been seeing informed us surgery was unfortunately not an option due to the condition of his other kidney. Our current options are opting for chemo or continuing steroid care and coming in for monthly check ups on the mass to monitor it’s size and spread. We haven’t yet made a decision on chemo, we are weighing our options to make sure whatever we do Dax has a good quality of life.

The cost of this care is not a number we can reach on our own. Not to mention, the thousands of debt we have already collected.

So I’m asking for help. I’m going to do whatever I can to help Dax and any little bit can help us reach our goal.

First plan of action was to raise funds to pay for the sampling procedure ($1,300), which again was made possible by all of the donations we already received. Thank you so so much.

Secondly, raising money for further prescriptions and check-ups which could be thousands more.

Finally, paying off what we’ve already invested in our baby’s health ($4,900).

Dax is the first pet I’ve ever had and I’d do anything to make sure he doesn’t suffer.

Thank you again for your help, we’ll keep this page updated if you want to follow along on the journey <3