Half the Way Home: Emergency Medical Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

To pay off medical bills for Martha and continue her treatment

This grant helped replenish funds after/while treating Martha for multiple pellet wounds to the face.

How many pets did this grant help?

1

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Martha came in to Animal Control with wounds to the face. As her stay wore on, her face/nose continued to swell. When Half the Way Home pulled her and posted her photo to our Facebook page, someone asked if she was a rabbit! She had two wounds to the nose and a hole in the roof of her mouth. She would eat wet food, and then sneeze it out through her nose and eye. Yes: her eye. She was a mess. Testing was done. Her nose was so big. Could this be a wound plus a tumor or fungus? X-rays showed nothing lodged.

She started her treatment on pain meds, two antibiotics and an inflammatory. This lasted for a month! Then she did another round of antibiotics. Things seemed to be moving along, but there was still swelling in the bridge of her nose, so a fungal test was done. Not a fungus. It was decided she needed a biopsy and nasal flush. That was when we submitted for the grant. We were easily getting more and more in the red. While Martha was under, she was spayed and vetted. Her biopsy results came back benign! Hooray!

So where are we right now? She will likely have chronic sinusitis for the rest of her life, managed by meds as needed. She still has the hole in the roof of her mouth, which the vet thinks will close on its own in the next two months or so. We are going to try her on a trial anti-viral med to see if the sneezing will taper off a bit, and the vet thinks it will aid in the hole closing on its own. If the hole does not close, we will be doing surgery to stitch it.

Martha is not up for adoption at this point. We want to be sure she is in the best possible shape before moving on — although word on the street is that her foster family is absolutely smitten with her and just may be a foster fail, which would be just fine with us! Thank you for awarding us the emergency medical grant. It enabled us to provide Martha with the care she needed and deserved.