Seeking help for my boy

fundraising page here

Never thought I’d find myself in this position, but here I am.

Late one night last week, Bernie really wasn’t himself and we felt a mass in his belly. We called an advice line and were told it was an emergency situation, and that we needed to get him to an out of hours vet immediately.

Once he was checked, we learned he was suffering from something called idiopathic feline lower urinary tract disease, meaning his urethra is constricting and not allowing him to pass urine.

He has had 3 catheters, and is still unable to urinate. A fourth catheter has been inserted today, until he can (hopefully) have surgery on Monday.

The only option now to avoid losing him, is a procedure called perennial urethrostomy, to create a new opening in his urethra, so that he can urinate.

Unfortunately the care he has already received over the past week has taken us up to the limit of his insurance cover, and we have been quoted £6,500 for the procedure.

We are of course working to raise the funds ourselves, but the avenues we’re exploring aren’t guaranteed and if approved, are likely to take some time to get to us.

This is a living nightmare for us, so I’m throwing myself at the aid of the internet.

Even if all you can do is share the GoFundMe link where you think it may be seen by someone who can help, we would all be so grateful.

fundraising page here

kool_newt,

I wonder if there is or could be some sort of online service where one could validate a medical/veterinary case number that is tied to a specific gofundme. Even if it’s like solution for a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Byereddithellolemmy,

When this is done and dusted, I will look into how this might work from an infrastructure perspective.

My role is in IT and it would be a fun project. Thanks again so much.

kool_newt,

I work in IT too, Linux, “devops”. Maybe we work on it?

Byereddithellolemmy,

That would be cool. I primarily deal in SQL, and mostly handle first line support, but also deal with on-prem to hosted migration on AWS, I find and report bugs, raise tickets, test fixes, and do some account management type stuff with customers.

I’ll loop back to this and if you’re still up for it, let’s get something going when all this madness has settled down.

kool_newt,

Sounds good to me!

Byereddithellolemmy,

So while we’re hammering on with the fundraising activity, I’ve had this mulling over in the back of my mind and my initial thoughts are to utilize something like DocuSign, or something along those lines. At my work we developed something for the customers of our application to manage their signature required documents, which could be emailed out to the recipient, and they could digitally sign it before sending it back.

We’re pretty stacked in terms of resource at the moment (deployment of a new application, upgrades, fixes and performance investigations across others), so I likely won’t be able to get a great deal of support from the team. But I’ll have a look at what our stuff looks like and see if there’s anything I can take as inspiration, or at the very least get some understanding of functionality.

Is there a better way for us to communicate than here? I use ProtonMail, Signal, and more recently I’ve started getting into Mastodon. I know Discord is pretty good, but I have heard concerning rumours around their privacy policy. Do you have any preference? I also just got set up with Skiff, which has a good workspace solution, all E2E, and seems to just work. There’s also Jitsi Meet that I’ve been toying with with my friends, but haven’t really given it a great deal of use.

Of course, if your preference would be to stay here for now, that’s totally fine (but do you have any recommendations for any web client? Just got onto a Windows Server laptop I’ve recently spun up, as I was struggling to keep up with everything on my mobile)

kool_newt,

Jitsi looks cool, might be a bit much at the moment. Maybe Signal or email for now? I don’t have proton but pay for my own service through Namecheap.

How’s it looking with your kitty?

Byereddithellolemmy,

Once everything settles down and the boy is home, we’ll pick this back up? I’m also getting married on Friday. This week was supposed to be to relax before the big day…

Bernie has an appointment for the procedure tomorrow and we’ve managed to raise £3,875 so far.

We’ve also been contacted by someone at GoFundMe who says they were moved by our story and would like to reach out to some contacts in the media for us.

We might be getting local/national news coverage, depending on if an outlet wants to pick up the story.

In addition to the GoFundMe, we’re exploring finance and may have a loan, but we won’t know for sure until later this week - whereas the procedure should be going ahead tomorrow.

A friend is running a tattoo giveaway at their studio, where the prize will be a full day session. Every £10 donation is an entry, and she has something like 50,000 followers!

www.instagram.com/reel/CwKd7jVhDZZ/

Our heads are spinning. We just want him well and home.

kool_newt,

That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you guys and Bernie.

kool_newt,

Wish you the best! If there was some way to know this isn’t a scam I’d donate.

Byereddithellolemmy, (edited )

Totally understandable.

What would you consider verification? I’ve got emails and texts from the Vet, call recordings, charges on my credit card, his medication documents.

I completely get the suspicion, as I’m just as hesitant to donate to unkown causes myself; but if there’s a way I can provide you verification, please let me know. We’re doing everything we can to get him this surgery. He’s only 5 years old.

Edit: if anyone would like verification, I’m happy to oblige. Please message me directly and I’m prepared to share what I have. This is the internet, so I completely understand the suspicion, but this is my boy and I’m prepared to do what it takes to keep him alive.

kool_newt, (edited )

Ok I donated, I looked up the vet online and saw the same phone number. I tried to call it (from usa) but apparently I don’t know how to. All I can say is I’m willing to risk being scammed for the amount I donated simply because you seem honestly distressed and my vibe sensors are OK with it and your kitty reminds me of my Bella I lost tragically.

Byereddithellolemmy,

I’m so sorry for your loss.

Thank you so much for believing us, my WTB and I are blown away by the support we’ve had so far, and how amazing the response has been. We’ve been blubbering messes all afternoon.

I promise you a follow up when we move this forward. We had a call from the Vet about half hour ago that his catheter is draining well and that his levels are good.

At this pace we might end up being able to get this funded.

Also I just discussed this with her and we’re going to share the documentation in our GoFundMe page, as you’re right, we should have something to evidence what we’re claiming.

Thank you.

Byereddithellolemmy,

Edit: I posted some verification here, but I’m going to share it as a private message instead. The documents do still show the practice’s address, email and phone number, and I’m concerned that it might bite me in the arse to post that information publicly.

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