Update, 8/24 9pm:

Stanley has passed. The expenses are less but still a big chunk. More info on the details of them later. Thank you everyone.

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Anyone who knows me, knows Stanley. And knows how much I love this damn cat. All of this feels like it has happened so fast. Thank you in advance for reading.

Some of you know that Stanley was diagnosed with diabetes about 2-3 weeks ago. That, alone, was hard and scary and had a lot of cat mom guilt that came along with it.

We found an amazing vet here in NY (Dr. Johnson at Aqueduct Animal Hospital) who has been with us every step of the way - reading every single one of my crazy emails as we started the treatment plan of 2 insulin injections every day (12 hours apart and 20-30 minutes after he eats a full meal). It has been a struggle to get him to eat enough for the full doses. And at the time, we didn’t know how dire it was to treat it aggressively from the beginning. I knew that Stanley didn’t feel good but he wasn’t acting crazy abnormal. Everyone thought that just the insulin would get him back to being himself. All of this was scary and new but diabetes alone wasn’t going to impact the length or quality of his life - the fact that we were now treating it was all we thought we had to do. After a week of injections, it even seemed like he was getting a bit more pep in his step again.

Yesterday, we made a trip to the emergency vet (Capital District Vet Referral Hospital).

There is something called Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA) that we learned about from the beginning - it’s one of the worst case scenarios and I took him in concerned about that as he wasn’t wanting to eat anything at that point and all he wanted was to drink water in the bathtub (his favorite pasttime for years).

Last night (8/23), we learned that he is very DKA. He was likely DKA, or teetering around DKA from the beginning, and struggling to treat the diabetes aggressively has lead us to full DKA. He is currently hospitalized for at least three days as they try to stabilize him. The 24 hour mark will be around noon today (8/24) and we will have more information and data to work with. We should know how long the stabilization process will be and what the future will look like.

So far, I have accrued around $6500 of medical debt for him - not including anything diabetes related prior to the emergency vet and all the food we have went through since he has become so picky. I do have pet insurance, so this will help but will not be immediate. It sounds like there will be more to come. I am working on figuring out what a realistic limit is for us. I will post more details on what is being done medically and cost-wise as we move forward for those to see and understand what money is going to. I do not expect anything from this. I just know that Stanley and I have people across the whole U.S. that love us dearly - and how fortunate are we for that. In this day and age, this feels like what I am supposed to do in a time like this. A little bit from a lot of people can go a long way, and if not - I am a figure it out kind of gal and it will all work out anyway.

Thank you all again.