From Kristen.Tunstall at ngc.com  Mon Jun 21 08:14:53 2004
From: Kristen.Tunstall at ngc.com (Tunstall, Kristen (Mission Systems))
Date: Mon Jun 21 11:07:00 2004
Subject: [Mailman] Request for Vote on Medical Expenses
Message-ID: <926D3F10CEDCAC4A8445856A4EE8B71D123124@xcgvad01.northgrum.com>

  

Hi there,

I need your vote on some medical expenses I'm incurring at Pender for some foster kitties.

As you know we've had an unfortunate outbreak of distemper, and unfortunately now I have it in my house.  I have a mother cat and initially 4 kittens that came down with it last week.  Mark and I have spent most of last week, day and nite, trying to keep them going.  We've seen several vets who didn't want to keep them, they gave the kittens injections and told us to use Amoxi drops.  We had a ringer bag donated to us so we used that for fluids.  I lost the first one of this litter at midnight Saturday.  We were holding him when he died but it didn't do anything to alleviate the pain he went through or the anguish I felt.

Sunday things turned critical for the rest of the group and we tried several vets but they were either closed or closing.  All Pets did not want to hospitalize the cats and were closing at 10:00 a.m., but left us a ringer bag to use since we had were running low on fluids.  We went to use the bag and fortunately Mark noticed this was for IV, not sub-q, and would have killed everyone if we had used it (we think a tech pulled the wrong stuff).  The vet choices now were the Vienna Emergency Clinic or Pender.  I called Pender and they said they would at least hydrate everyone and send us home with the right stuff for supportive maintenance.  However, when they saw what condition the mother cat and kittens were in they rearranged most of the cats in their hospital and made room for our kitties.  They said there was no way they would live if we took them home, but they had a pretty good chance
if they were hospitalized.  Also, I felt if anyone started to suffer they could be put down in comfort, rather than ending his life gasping for breath.

The options were to put all on IV (if they could get an IV in the kittens since they are small).  This could have cost up to $4,000 and was the most expensive option.  Other options were to just do supportive maintenance on all, or to do IV on some and not others.  I chose to put the mother cat on IV and do supportive maintenance on the kittens.  I feel that the mom, Clarisse, has been in this world a bit longer and has been an absolute fantastic mom to her kittens.  This in itself was a very hard choice since I have grown attached to all of these guys in the short time I've had them and would love to put them all on IV.

What I'm asking for is relief on the bills for this.  I know it will cost in excess of $1,000 and after talking to Cynthia I would be happy to have Fancy Cats pay me back in installments.  Cynthia had reminded me this is a board decision so I need your vote as to whether Fancy Cats is willing to pick up the bill.  

In case you are wondering, Clarisse is a petite torti, long haired kitty with sparkling green eyes, and she has an incredibly sweet disposition (other than when having sub-q fluids forced in her).  Her kittens are like calendar kitties.  Their names are Cha-cha, Bolero and Rumba.  I know all are very adoptable.  As of this morning all are still living and looking a bit better.

Please let me know how you vote.  Thank you.

Kristen

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