Amelia C. Gormley

Hi there! Thank you so, so much for your contribution.

In my most recent update on Bailey, I mentioned that when I saw the vet on Friday, she did say that she wanted to do an ultrasound because she suspected some sort of irritable bowel disorder. She said when Bailey gets older, it could progress to the sort of lymphoma you’re mentioning, but she says Bailey is a little young for that yet. I’ve got an appetite stimulant in pill form (probably very similar if not the same thing as the cortisol, since she did say it’s a steroid) as well as an anti-nausea medication.

I’m having mixed success getting the pills into her, but something seems to be working, because she is eating somewhat. It started on Saturday, when in desperation I force-fed her a little food on a spoon. That somehow triggered something and she sat down and ate maybe 1/3 of the food I put down for her, and then ate another 1/3 maybe a half hour to an hour later. Sunday she actually woke me up at 6am begging me to feed her, and ate most of what I put down in the morning, and later that day ate some dry food as well.

She’s still not eating a LOT, sometimes what I put down goes uneaten, but at least she’s eating something, and her energy is reflecting it. Instead of huddling in a ball under a chair or end table away from where we all are, she’s doing her usual thing of positioning herself in the middle of the house, so she’s sort of equidistant from all of us when we’re in different rooms. She used to like to play with her vaporizer/humidifier, because she could bubbles happen if she bumped the water tank around, but she hasn’t done that for weeks. Yesterday, however, I heard her out in the living room, giving that humidifier what-for.

So things are looking a little more hopeful for Bailey. I’m not sure she’s grooming herself yet, and I’m not confident she’s getting enough calories (I’m feeding her about 1/8 of a 5oz can of food four times a day, and often it’s not getting fully eaten, so she’s getting less than half a can of food a day) but at least she’s getting something, which is more than I could have said last week.

After rallying briefly last weekend, which we assumed was the effect of the medications helping, Bailey returned to not eating. As of this past Saturday, she was down to 7lbs, 12oz. She was 9.7lbs the week before, so she’s losing weight rapidly.

Since apparently it wasn’t the medications that were helping, we guessed it might have been the subcutaneous fluids, since she had been a little dehydrated (she’s not drinking either.) So I went into the vet and learned to administer the subQ fluids at home. But we’e given her fluids twice now (every other day) and all it’s done is make her pee more. She’s still not eating.

We’re back to watering down the wet food and force-feeding her using a syringe. She doesn’t like the process, but she tolerates the food just fine. She doesn’t vomit or have diarrhea. She perks up when she gets food. She just has zero interest in eating, and nothing we’re doing seems to be helping.

Force-feeding is not a sustainable long-term solution. It requires two people, which just can’t happen every few hours every day. At this point, she’s so emaciated she has probably started to metabolize her own organs, and I don’t believe that organ damage is reversible even if we do manage, by some miracle, to get her built back up.

Is it time to say goodbye? As of Saturday I was determined to give it until after the new year. But when she wouldn’t even sniff the food I was putting out, and each time I felt how bony she was when I petted her, I started thinking it needed to be today that I had to take her in to be put to sleep. But last night started wavering and wondering if I could just keep hydrating and feeding and medicating her until she somehow finds her interest in eating again.

Am I being cruel? I don’t know. I don’t know when to give up on things. I never have. And everything I’ve tried to accomplish this year has failed; I think maybe I’m investing saving Bailey with the need for some sort of win this year, and it’s not fair to her.

Some people have asked how Bailey is doing. I stopped posting about her because it made me uncomfortable and self-conscious to ask for contributions and I didn’t want to feel like I was nagging people when it was obvious everyone who was going to donate had done so. But those who did contribute might like to know how things are going, so…

We had hoped she’d start eating again after her sore teeth were removed, but that hasn’t been the case. She’s still not eating or grooming herself. Her energy is a little low, though not, like, deathly low, and she’s clearly INTERESTED in food, but she’s just not eating. She’ll lick it a couple times, maybe, and if I give her the stew rather than the pate, she might lick up the gravy but leave the chunks. When I’m in the kitchen preparing her food, she’s interested, but…that interest isn’t translating to actually eating the damn food. She won’t touch her dry food, and if I open a can of moist food, at least 95% of it goes to waste.

At first we thought it might be the antibiotics she was on until last Friday causing problems, but it’s been a week now since her last dose, and she still hasn’t resumed eating. The places where her teeth were extracted have healed up just fine. It could be she just doesn’t like the feeling of trying to eat with them being gone, but so much so that she lets herself starve?

In the last few days, we’ve taken to watering down the pate so we can force-feed her using a syringe. It’s not a long-term solution, and highly unpleasant for everyone involved (me, mixing the food and feeding it to her; my husband, holding her head still and getting her mouth open so we don’t end up with cat-food sludge everywhere; and of course Bailey herself) but at least we’re getting some calories and hydration into her, because she’s not drinking much water either.

So I took her back to the vet today (very glad we purchased that Pet Health Club membership, which has already paid for itself and then some, just by making her last exam and today’s appointment free, not to mention the discount on the dental services.)

She is down to 9.7 pounds from 10 a couple weeks ago when they weighed her prior to her dental work a few weeks ago, and down from 12 lbs in 2017. Not good, but not deathly. Still, I don’t like how well I can feel her spine when I pet her. She’s a little dehydrated, and the vet thought her gums looked a little pale. She wants me to examine Bailey’s stool so see if it’s black (which would indicate bleeding in her GI tract) but yeah, the cat would have to be eating enough to poop for me to be able to do that.

So, Bailey is not a vicious cat when you take her to the vet; she doesn’t hiss or yowl or struggle at all. She’s not passive, per se, because she’s quite tense and not at all chill, but she just goes very still and quiet. She tries to hide in her carrier so we have to take the top off it because she won’t come out of it willingly.

I took advantage of this to groom her while we were there, while I had her on the table and was talking to the vet. I pulled out a huge handful of mats that were stuck in her fur. Her fur is so matted (and the mats tend to sort of shear off everything around it) that if you look underneath the fluff, she has some fairly large bald patches where I managed to work the mats free. The vet said her skin doesn’t appear irritated, so it’s likely just the mats. If we can get rid of those and get her grooming herself again, this will be fine. Unfortunately, if she’s feeling too punk to eat, she’s obviously not going to feel like cleaning herself.

At this point, with Bailey’s history (since we got her) of only being able to tolerate certain foods that are formulated to be easy on the digestive system, the vet is suspecting some sort of irritable bowel disorder. Ideally she would like to do an ultrasound to see what is happening, but we simply can’t afford to go any deeper into debt on this.

They gave her some subcutaneous fluids to help with the dehydration. But at this point, we can’t do any more tests or procedures, so only option is to guess and hope for the best. We’ve got anti-nausea medication, an appetite stimulant that may make things worse depending on if the problem really is irritable bowel disease, and the drug sold as Pepcid at the pharmacy–which I actually did pick up at the pharmacy because it’s the exact same thing I could get at the vets, for 1/3 the price.

Also, the super-special sensitive stomach food, which is $3 a can, as opposed to the $2.25 a can for the merely sorta-special sensitive stomach food.

Today’s bill was $200, which (along with the $100 last week on a more comprehensive kidney function test they did when they found protein in her urine during the dental cleaning) brings the total we’ve spent up to $1300. I raised $450 a few weeks, so we’re $850 in debt on this now.

If the new food and the meds don’t work, then this is it for Bailey. We can go no further. Force-feeding is not a tenable, long-term solution. It just isn’t. So if we can’t convince her to eat, she is going to have to be put down, because it would be cruel to let her slowly starve to death.

I know some people aren’t sure about using Ko-Fi, but I don’t really have anything else to offer for people who want to contribute. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears. Because we spent over $200, we have 6 months of no interest to pay off the CareCredit plan we got for this.

So. I’m just gonna offer my Ko-Fi link again, but I’m not going to keep posting about this. I hate having to post about it at all. If you do contribute or have contributed, know that I’m incredibly grateful. Thank you.

Here, have a very stoned and somewhat disgruntled kitty…

Here’s Bailey after we got her home from the vet’s last night. She was sort of stoned from the anesthesia for a while. Watching her staggering around drunk and walking into walls and tipping right over when we tried to pet her was kinda hilarious.

She’s still a little glassy-eyed this morning, but no longer staggering. She ate the food I put out for her enthusiastically, even though it included a pain pill.

We haven’t raised the total amount needed. Not even close. But she was in pain and still not eating enough, so we put the charges on credit so that we could at least get it done. Now we need to pay that off.

The total ended up being $218 more than expected, because it turns out the estimate didn’t include extraction of the teeth that were giving her trouble. There were two of those, neither of which, oddly enough, was the one we suspected might be the problem. Go figure.

Here is the receipt from yesterday:

This, in addition to the $319 we spent for the exam and bloodwork on Friday, and the $35 I spent on her antibiotics, brings the total to just over $1000.

We’ve raised about $350 so far. The rest is on our credit cards and we really need to pay it off, or I won’t be able to afford to go home to take care of my sister when she has her brain tumor removed, if that turns out to be necessary. My sister is visiting the neurosurgeon today, so I hope to know more about that soon.

I’ve already told my husband not to get me a Christmas present and any Christmas money we receive from our family will be going to pay this down, except for a portion we’ll set aside so that our son can have a couple presents.

This is Bailey.

Bailey is approximately 5 years old, and lately she has barely been eating or grooming herself and we don’t know why.

She has moderately severe mats in her fur around her belly where she doesn’t let us pet or groom her. She has lost a little weight, she is hungry enough to beg (very uncharacteristically, because she’s never been the sort of cat who does that) when we’re eating something fragrant, but she ignores the dry food we give her.

We’ve had to start giving her canned food instead, and still she barely eats any of that. She hasn’t vomiting back up what she attempts to eat; she just. isn’t. eating. The other night she vomited up some white foam, which suggests that her stomach was completely empty. Not even bile.

We suspect it’s a dental issue, possibly a tooth abscess. We do know she has a tartar issue we’ve been procrastinating on addressing for financial reasons. We need to get her teeth cleaned and get dental x-rays. That will cost us about $400-$500. We took her in for an exam and bloodwork today. That was another $300. Hopefully that $700-$800 in vet expenses will be the end of this issue and no further treatment will be needed.

Christmas is coming up and it was already going to be a very lean holiday for us. My sister was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor; she’s going to be meeting with her neurosurgeon this week, and depending on how much support she needs during her treatment and recovery, I may be required to travel back home and help take care of her, which will be another expense we just can’t afford.

I don’t like doing this. I’ve never asked for money before, but I don’t see how we’re going to get through the next couple months with all of this going on, unless we let Bailey’s care go unaddressed.

I know it’s the holidays, and things are tight for everyone. But please, if you can, maybe contribute a little to my Ko-Fi account to help us get Bailey the care she needs?

This is the receipt. The Pet Health Club membership made the exam that day free, and will give us a discount on the dental work as well. The discount isn’t reflected in the estimate, but all told we’ll end up spending less this way.

Here is the estimate for the dental work:

The bloodwork that came back Friday evening did indicate an elevated white blood cell count, which along with the slight inflammation at her gumline supports the idea that she has a tooth abscess, but we won’t know until we get the dental x-ray. I did spend another $35 that night on antibiotics (I don’t have the receipt for that scanned in) which should help get the inflammation down and enable her to eat a little more comfortably until the dental work is done.

The handwritten amount of $22.52 is for grooming/brushing out of the mats in her fur on her belly that have formed since she hasn’t been grooming herself. They figure they may as well do it while she’s under the anesthesia so it will be less stressful and uncomfortable for her.

This is Bailey.

Bailey is approximately 5 years old, and lately she has barely been eating or grooming herself and we don’t know why.

She has moderately severe mats in her fur around her belly where she doesn’t let us pet or groom her. She has lost a little weight, she is hungry enough to beg (very uncharacteristically, because she’s never been the sort of cat who does that) when we’re eating something fragrant, but she ignores the dry food we give her.

We’ve had to start giving her canned food instead, and still she barely eats any of that. She hasn’t vomiting back up what she attempts to eat; she just. isn’t. eating. The other night she vomited up some white foam, which suggests that her stomach was completely empty. Not even bile.

We suspect it’s a dental issue, possibly a tooth abscess. We do know she has a tartar issue we’ve been procrastinating on addressing for financial reasons. We need to get her teeth cleaned and get dental x-rays. That will cost us about $400-$500. We took her in for an exam and bloodwork today. That was another $300. Hopefully that $700-$800 in vet expenses will be the end of this issue and no further treatment will be needed.

Christmas is coming up and it was already going to be a very lean holiday for us. My sister was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor; she’s going to be meeting with her neurosurgeon this week, and depending on how much support she needs during her treatment and recovery, I may be required to travel back home and help take care of her, which will be another expense we just can’t afford.

I don’t like doing this. I’ve never asked for money before, but I don’t see how we’re going to get through the next couple months with all of this going on, unless we let Bailey’s care go unaddressed.

I know it’s the holidays, and things are tight for everyone. But please, if you can, maybe contribute a little to my Ko-Fi account to help us get Bailey the care she needs?

Now Available on Kindle Unlimited!

Sea Change

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62622-611-1 eBook release: Sept 22, 2018 (1st edition May 19, 2014) eBook Formats: mobi Print ISBN: 978-1-62622-612-8 Print release: COMING SOON! Word count: 100,700 Page count: 340  

One summer can change everything…

Topher Carlisle’s always been the black sheep—literally—in his middle-class family. Biracial, gay, and genderfluid, his family doesn’t think he’ll amount to much, and he just might believe them.

After a bout of severe depression has put both his academic and financial prospects in danger, he accepts his best friend’s offer to stay in her family’s summer home while he works to make up the shortfall of his athletic scholarship. But his tendency for self-sabotage is strong and soon a terrible mistake in judgment leaves him homeless.

From the moment he sees Topher, artist Jace Sieger knows that this is someone he needs to capture on canvas. He’s no stranger to poor life choices, and he sees something in Topher worth nurturing.

The challenge, though, is chipping through Topher’s prickly defenses to reach the sensitive, traumatized soul beneath. With the help of his friends Geoff and Robin, maybe, just maybe, they can convince Topher he’s worth something after all, and that a few mistakes don’t make him irredeemable.

What starts as a casual vacation fling grows into something that will change both of them forever.

(This novel is a newly-released and retitled second edition. It was previously available under the title Saugatuck Summer.)

Find it at:

Amazon

Now Available on Kindle Unlimited!

RISK AWARE

(this book takes place prior to Sea Change, in the same universe)

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62622-613-5 eBook release: Sept 22, 2018 (1st edition May 9, 2016) eBook Formats: .mobi Print ISBN: 978-1-62622-614-2 Print release: COMING SOON! (1st edition May 9, 2016) Word count: 85,300 Page count: 280  

A Life Half-Lived No More…

Hemophiliac Geoff Gilchrest has lived his entire life swaddled in figurative bubble wrap, thanks to his overprotective mother. Now he’s free of everything except the prison of his own mind, where forbidden desires war against crippling self-doubt.

Geoff is a masochist. He craves his sex with a side of pain and degradation. But when getting shoved against a wall could result in catastrophic brain injury and even a moderate flogging could leave him paralyzed—or worse—it’s hard to find a dom willing to step up and give Geoff the experiences he’s been longing for.

Robin Brady has doubts of his own. Still stinging from massive violations of trust on the part of his drug-addicted ex, he has retreated to Saugatuck to start a new life. But the yearning in Geoff’s eyes calls to him, and he knows that, armed with a deft hand and foreknowledge, he can give Geoff what he’s been seeking, without putting Geoff’s safety at risk.

First, though, he’s got to convince Geoff to trust him—not just with his well-being, but with his pride. Geoff’s injured self-esteem and trouble with communicating what he perceives as weaknesses, could end them before they have a chance to begin.

Find it at:

Amazon

I almost forgot to announce this! This week, Strain is on sale at Amazon for $0.99. You can also, as always, read the entire Strain trilogy on Kindle Unlimited!

In other news, my Saugatuck series is getting ready for release! Saugatuck Summer has undergone a title change, and is now titled Sea Change. Still starring the same broken, irrepressible Topher, though!

And Geoff and Robin are as sizzling as ever in the re-release of Risk Aware!

The VFX editor for Shadowhunters, Ron Rauch, has offered to donate $0.10 to the Trevor Project fundraiser for every retweet he gets, up to $500.

Darren Swimmer has offered to match his donation.

That’s up to $1000 for the fundraiser.

We have about 7 more hours to get him up to 2400 more retweets, so please, if you have a Twitter account, please retweet this from the link above.