help us support winston’s end-of-life care — memphis, tn
Hello everyone. As you may know, our senior cat, Winston, was diagnosed with squamous cell sarcoma, which is an aggressive form of cancer, on March 12.
On Friday, we met with an oral surgeon, who informed us that if Winston were to have surgery alone, his prognosis would be 40 days post-surgery. If we were to do that, he’d be spending the rest of his little life recovering from an extremely invasive surgery.
This is completely devastating, and definitively means that there is no feasible way to cure his cancer. Gold-standard care, which would include surgery, chemo, and radiation, could give him up to a year, but there’s no guarantee that it’d be a comfortable year. It would also cost $15,000 minimum just to start.
The only other option on the oncology path would be palliative radiation, which could give him another 4-6 months, but again, not guaranteed to be comfortable, and he would have to go under anesthesia each time. We want to look at this from his perspective, and we don’t see any way that radiation would be something he would want.
This leaves us with the kindest option, which would be to continue medical palliative care for as long as we can keep him comfortable. This includes medications, holistic care, a PEG tube (feeding tube that goes directly into the stomach), and lots and lots of love.
This is our worst nightmare, and I truly don’t know what I am going to do without him. He is my soul cat, my universe, my reason to keep going. He hasn’t even been in our life for two years, and it feels like some kind of cruel punishment to have him ripped from us so soon. We always joked that he’d live forever.
Continuing his palliative care will be expensive, and his feeding tube placement will be around $1200, which we have, all thanks to you guys. Once the tube is placed, his medications, food and fluids will all be able to be done through the tube, which will be so much better and more comfortable for him.
We have plans to do home euthanasia when it is time, and quite elaborate plans for him post-death. Although a controversial decision, we hope to have him taxidermied, specifically soft-mounted. This sounds elaborate, or even morbid to some, but I truly cannot imagine not being able to see him or pet him ever again.
For now, we are giving him everything that he wants, bringing him everywhere with us, and doing every single thing for him that we possibly can. You all have helped us give him the greatest gift, which is a comfortable and happy end-of-life filled to the top with love.
We have friends coming to visit him soon, we are considering bringing him to the beach (despite being 7 hours from the closest beach), and we’re trying to think of other things to do with him before he goes. Please give us lots of ideas :,)
We need your help to continue his palliative care, as well as support his postmortem care. We are likely about to start him on 2 more medications to slow down the growth and reduce pain. His medication regimen is veryyy comfort based and we pay extra for injectable or transdermal versions of his meds so that we don’t have to touch his mouth.
You can donate directly to Winston’s primary vet by calling this number:
(901)660-7570
OR navigating to it through this link:
https://linktr.ee/chronicallymurph
The patient name is Winston Beyer!
Gofundme: https://gofund.me/42b98d5b4
Cashapp: $murphybeyer
Venmo: @murphdawgswizzle