I hope everyone here understands that Rumble has no expiration date stamped on the bottom of his foot.
When we adopted him into our family, we promised to make sure he had the best possible life and that includes medical care. I think the majority of people think we are crazy for the amount of money we have spent on Rumble but you can't put a price tag on life and as long as it's still a good, loving life, we will keep on keeping on.
My husband and I pride ourselves in having no debt expect our house and student loans. But that has all changed with Rumble. We were able to pay for alot of his expenses with cash from our savings, but since then we have opened a Care Credit account and have put money on our credit card.
Care Credit is a 12 month, interest free credit card as long as you completely pay it off in 12 months. If not, they hit you with interest at 26.99%. That is huge. We plan to do everything possible to pay it off in 12 months and if not, at 11 months, we will transfer everything left onto our credit card that runs at 12.99% interest.
I will be completely honest with you about money. This hurts my brain a little and I don't want to add up the final number. Every original appointment with our vet cost $75 plus whatever additional we had done. Blood work, Ultrasound, and X-rays cost anywhere from $200 - $300 each time and I think we had 3 sets done. His surgery, anesthesia, pain meds, stay in the ICU, all his meds, post-op, everything he accrued while in the hospital, cost around $3,500. The first week of his chemo includes two medicines (one rare) and runs us about $440. The second week of his chemo only has one medicine (the rare one) and runs us about $240. He has 5 rounds of chemo. I've been told the feeding tube will cost around $250. His Viokase is expensive and costs around $80 for 4 ounces but that seems to last us about a month to 6 weeks. The two anti nausea medicines are cheap, in my opinion, around $8 each. We go through a ton of food, litter, trash bags, and cleaning solution every week. I'd say around $20 a week.
For the first time ever, we are living pay check to pay check. We are slowly building our savings account back up and are trying to pay off the Care Credit as fast as possible. We do not have insurance on Rumble, but I sure wish we had. Now, everything would be considered pre-existing so I'm not sure that it would be much help to add it. We do have Home Again insurance but that's only if he sustains an injury after having escaped our home. Hind Sight is 20-20, right?
Please don't be scared by the amount of money it takes. It has been worth every penny to us and we have never looked back.
My kitty, Mooshu, recently lost his battle against kidney/GI lymphoma. In the beginning of the year, he started vomiting and losing weight. In March, an ultrasound was done and the vets thought he had inflammatory bowel disease. In May, after not responding well to the protocol treatment of IBD, another US was done, which showed stage 4B lymphosarcoma. We tried chemo, and he responded with the first round, but it was downhill from there. His appetite was up and down- more down than up. I just wished I discovered blogs like yours earlier. I learned about others on the web syringe feeding their cats. The oncologist never suggested for me to do this when my kitty wouldn't eat. I wish I would
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