This is one of the cutest Kickstarter ideas I’ve seen: a little boy wants to teach kids about science.
Of course I backed it: I want a postcard.
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I started up again with my school volunteer job, and it is very pleasant to go back to something that is now familiar: I know where to go, I know what to do, I could do the whole thing on my own at this point if I needed to. I wish I could remember, when considering something new, that the ONLY WAY to get to this point is to PLOW THROUGH the part where it’s weird and unfamiliar and I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s the ONLY way! There’s no way to hop over that part by, say, being anxious and procrastinating and wishing I didn’t have to.
One of the other volunteers asked what was new since the last time we talked, and all I could think of to tell him is that I’m now ordering inhalers from Canada for my CAT. Cats use the same inhalers people use (with a special cat adapter that costs another $60), but without the same insurance people use, and the two inhalers he’s supposed to use cost THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS. But from Canada, they cost one hundred dollars. Two inhalers is considered a one-month supply, though I’m hoping we won’t actually be using them at that rate.
Perhaps a certain cat might consider a JOB?
A person might pause here to put a price on the life of a cat. A person might be tempted to do the math on how many children in other countries could be completely supported for an entire year, for the price of one year of cat inhalers. A person might calculate how many new, non-asthmatic cats could be purchased for the price of the inhalers. But there it is: we are going to pay for the cat inhalers. Thank you, Canada, for being so accommodating about this. I would understand if Canada were a little tempted to make sarcastic remarks about socialism during the ordering process, but no.
Are you interested, as I was, to find out how inhalers are administered to cats? Here is a video:
FASCINATING. I had no idea that cats could even have asthma, let alone use inhalers! I watched that video with rapt attention. I am quite sure that if I tried to put that thing anywhere near my cat, he would claw my face right off.
Ditto! (Except I don’t have a cat, so not the last sentence.)
I was also fascinated. Learn something new every day. However, like you, I’m pretty sure I’d have to suit up with long gloves like firefighters wear and a kevlar vest if I was to try this on my cat. He’s heavy, grouchy, and made of claws. The damage to my arms and body would be . . . severe…
So I had to comment because I find the inhaler situation so frustrating. I’ve had asthma since I was in kindergarten. I used to be able to get an inhaler for $10. That was with insurance but there was a generic so let’s say it was more like $40. Even so several years ago, they took away the generic and the price skyrocketed. I don’t understand exactly why the generic disappeared. My doctor at the time mumbled something about an ingredient in it ended up getting a patent and so it could not be generic by more. I don’t have a point to this other than inhalers used to be cheaper here and it annoys me to no end.
Giving a cat an inhaler sounds like fun. By “fun,” I mean “a nightmare”
Oh! My parents cat has asthma too. It’s both heartbreaking & annoying. Cats man. Cats. (And I’m 100% a Cat Person)
You will get no smartass comments from me. I now have to get up at 5:15 a.m. every morning so that my diabetic cat can be fed and administered his insulin on time. A month’s supply of syringes costs about 20 bucks, and while the insulin is pricey at 235 dollars a vial, as long as it doesn’t get cloudy or start having particulates I can keep the vial for up to a year. The cat gets 5 units a day, and there’s a thousand units per vial, so the insulin actually works out to about 150 dollars a year (Assuming the vial isn’t contaminated and lasts through all 200 doses). I bought a glucose meter ($25)and test strips ($50 for a package of 50!) because the cat has to be monitored for an entire day every few months, in a test called a glucose curve. You take glucose readings before food and medication, and then at 2 hour intervals thereafter. I record the results and send them to the vet, who adjusts his insulin and feeding schedule accordingly. For the vet to do this, they would charge me their $75 office visit, a $75 day boarding fee, $10 per needle stick, and $10 per glucose test. So 13 glucose tests and 13 needle sticks equals 400 bucks, plus 150 in fees so 550 dollars every six months. Meanwhile, I can get 50 test strips and a glucose meter for 80 bucks–and the meter is a one-time cost. I won’t have to buy it again when the next test comes around. And the cat is only 12 years old. He’s indoor-only and always has been, so he actually has a 17-20 year life expectancy. If he were 16, I might reconsider treating him, but he can arguably be considered middle-aged rather than senior at this point, so it just seems wrong to put him down when the condition is so treatable. Of course I realize that we are very lucky in that we can afford this, and I would never, ever pass judgement on someone else for deciding that the cost was too high. Plus, it is a bit of a pain scheduling-wise. As I pointed out to my husband, this means no weekend trips or vacations until the cat dies, because who’s going to cat-sit an animal that has to be fed and medicated via injection every 12 hours?
Two of my friends have diabetic cats that require insulin. One of them found a cat sitter who happily comes over twice a day to give the cat his insulin when she’s away. Cat lovers are a unique breed of people; I think you could find someone if you looked in the right places.
I totally cat sat a diabetic cat (I have a diabetic husband so perhaps they thought I was more qualified?). So it IS possible to go for a weekend :) They administered cheese with each shot so the cat was totally easy to inject.
My guy is pretty easy to inject, which is weird, because as a rule, he’s kind of a jerk. He complains the whole time, but he doesn’t move or fight back. When I do the glucose curve test, by the 7th or 8th blood draw, he starts trying to pull his paw or his ear away, but still doesn’t really put up a fuss. Hmm…maybe it is possible for us to get away someday!
I really know nothing about cat inhalers (who knew!) but I have ordered drugs from non-USA pharmacies. You may want to price-check the meds from {in house pharmacy dot biz} which sounds totally not legit (it’s in Vanuatu for goodness sakes) but is actually legit! I got some cheap cheap generic drugs from them and it was cheaper than Canadian.
That is basically the exact same contraption I use to administer an inhaler to my toddler. I had no idea cats could even have asthma!
But is the difficult lady still also volunteering?!
So far I haven’t seen her!
Good news!
I volunteer for a rescue, and we get calls ALL THE TIME from people who want to surrender their cat because it developed a medical condition. Needless to say, most of these cats are unadoptable (nobody wants a sick cat), and they stay in rescue/foster care for the rest of their lives, never again having a true home of their own. THANK YOU for doing the right thing by your cat.
I wonder if you might like to share where in Canada you are getting the inhalers from? One of my cats has asthma, to the tune of $148 monthly inhaler cost, plus a second that we need to get every other month for $75. I’ve thought numerous times about trying to get them from out of the country but I get way too overwhelmed at the options. I did get lucky though- Dora is ridiculously good with the mask. I wouldn’t say she *likes* it, but she doesn’t struggle or try to get away at all.
Sure! The website is the word Canada followed by the word pharmacy, then dot com. I too would have been WAY too overwhelmed to figure it out myself, so I was extremely grateful that our vet had an information packet on it (one of the employees there has the same situation, so did all the research and can confirm from experience that the company and prescriptions are legit). The whole process feels weird and shady. You can’t order on the website: you have to call a 1-800 number (probably it’s on the site, but it was also in the packet), and set up an account with them first (name, address, etc.). THEN they give you a number for your vet to fax the prescriptions to, and the vet has to write your customer number on the front. THEN they call you back and finish setting up the account, which involves a lot of questions I found hard to answer (e.g., “How many inhalers do you want?” Me: “….Er. How many did the vet prescribe?”) but I did get through it. THEN, they only take payment by electronic check; I didn’t even know what that MEANT, but what it means is that you “write them a check” by giving them all the information from the front of a check. This made me nervous, but it’s the same information they would have had if I HAD written them a check. Also, it takes about a month to get the prescriptions. Anyway, it was kind of weird hassle, but I’m hoping now that I have it set up it’ll be a lot easier.
Oh, and they let you get up to a 3 months supply at a time, which I did to save on shipping. The shipping is $10 for a one-time shipment, $20 for a year’s worth of shipments, or $50 for a lifetime. I was surprised by the unexpected options and just went with the $10, but I wish I’d known the options ahead of time because $50 sounds like the best deal by far! Unless they go out of business, I suppose.
Another option they gave me was did I want them to take the electronic payment immediately, or “in 30 days interest free” or something. I went with “immediately,” because anything where someone starts talking about interest rates makes me nervous and I didn’t want them to say “Great! Let me just get some credit information from you…”
Thank you so much for the information! I really appreciate the step by step process- I handle things so much better when I know what to expect and can prepare my responses. THANK YOU!
When our dog was sick for a year with kidney disease, I despaired at every monthly vet bill and every expensive prescription — not because it was a financial hardship (although it was) but because I wanted to weep over the thought of how much further that money could go to help actual people. Possibly my work with an international development organization contributed to that, because I actually know precisely how that money could be spent. But she was my beloved dog. So.
As a Canadian, I am pleasantly surprised to hear you can get your kitty’s prescriptions cheaper here. Most things you can purchase cost more here than on your side of the border.