🐰 Help with Frappe’s overwhelming medical bills

Hi guys. Back in late May, my poor bunny Frappe had been displaying some pretty severe symptoms of what we believe to have been Floppy Bunny Syndrome. Floppy Bunny Syndrome is a neurological based condition in rabbits where they seem to be experiencing paralysis thus making them unable to move. Before this, Frappe was a perfectly healthy bunny and he had been dealing with the loss of his mate Snow who passed last year due to old age.

We noticed his condition on the night of May 25th and by May 26th he was taken to the emergency vet who told us that since he was starting to show symptoms, it could already be too late, they did not officially diagnose him at this point. We went on with treatment that lasted from roughly 4PM to 12AM the next morning, we okayed the $1K+ vet bill through carecredit but they wanted an additional $2K+ to hospitalize him overnight, we did not have this money as my hours were cut at work, my sister’s (his other owner) hours were also cut at her work and we are both students.

We decided to bring him home before we brought him home they provided us with critical care and told us that he may not make it through the night we stayed up from the moment we got home at around 12:30 AM and cared for him up until around 3 PM to where we could take him to another vet who also said that they had no clue what was going on with him and they could do bloodwork and x-rays, which was already done at the previous vet visit, but “it would all probably be for nothing,” they recommended that we re-hospitalize him at the same vet, which we did.

This time he was hospitalized for roughly 12 hours, and when we returned, we were told that his condition had not gotten better but it had also not gotten worse, upon being told this, we immediately realized that any decision made after this had a great impact on his quality of life; at this point he could not feed himself, he could not drink water by himself. Everything had to be done for him which he was not used to.

This is where we were presented with the option to put our baby down or bring him home and have him suffer and likely pass on his own, it was a very difficult decision due to as stated before, we just lost our other rabbit due to old age less than a year prior and frappe he was only four years old. so after a very long discussion and deliberation between my sister and I, we both made a very difficult decision to free our bunny from this very stressed out state that he was clearly in, we did not want to see him suffer any longer than he had already been before we even noticed his obvious symptoms. This process was another nearly $2K added onto the bill from the previous visit at this emergency vet which included the cheapest option of cremation for our boy. All of this would not have been possible if we did not have access to CareCredit or ScratchPay. We have been trying hard to pay with a plan of paying the amount divided by two biweekly, but the difficulty has become increased as I recently lost my job entirely and my sister is down to working 1-2 days a week at 4 hours per scheduled day and making minimum wage. We do not have any parental support. Any additional income we get goes to the vet bills.

Frappe meant everything to me, I got him from a Craigslist post 4 years ago as a nearly newborn when I was 16, I paid for him with my birthday money ($20) and I had no clue the impact he would make in my life. At that time I was severely depressed and struggling in school, I felt like I had no one there for me and my relationship with my mother was in the beginning stages of the toxicity that it is in now. He brought me comfort, he knew when I was sad or just wanted someone to just sit with me! Though he hated being handled, he’d always lick me reassuringly and sit nearby for cuddles and pets. I miss him more than anything! He was my first real pet and my first responsibility! He showed me what love was and what it meant to have love for another being. He’s watched me grow from a hopeless depressed teenager to a woman who’s still figuring it out but confident she will make it out. Frappe was my anchor.