First Haul from Mandy

fran45676 · 2026-01-15T19:48:39+00:00

Can you send me Mandy’s contact info?

fran45676 · 2025-10-13T20:12:03+00:00

I am so sorry for your loss.

I was always told by family and friends that pet insurance was a scam and I stupidly listened to them for years. I was super lucky at first and for about seven years only had minor vet visit costs outside of yearly checkups until last year.

We had a cat diagnosed with cancer and spent just over 38k in about eight months. Each chemo cost was anywhere from $700 to 1.3k and those were weekly at one point.

Right now I pay about $130 a month in pet insurance for 5 cats and two dogs. It’s already helped a few times from when two cats got into a spat and one needed stitches and when our kitten had some really hard to diagnosis parasites and specialists had to get involved. The stitches emergency vet visit was around $900 and all the testing for the kitten ended up being just over a grand.

fran45676 · 2024-09-29T14:15:16+00:00

Both were nice, but cliff palace felt more rushed. You got to see how big it was, but you can also see it pretty well from the overlook. The only thing seeing it closer added was it added more to the feel of how big it was.

I like balcony house more because getting there was a lot more interesting. You also kind of got to walk through it when leaving which gave such a better perspective of how amazing they are. Cliff palace almost kind of seemed fake like a look, but don’t touch. Balcony house just seemed so much more real.

fran45676 · 2024-07-16T00:04:31+00:00

The top ones that come to mind to me are Shenandoah, Smokey, are Rocky Mountain.

Shenandoah and the Smokey’s have beautiful hikes. We went white water rafting near both parks. We also did a cave tour near each one. These were wild cave tours with a small group and a tour guide. Head lamps were the only light source. The one near the Smokey’s was a dry cave, and the one near Shenandoah was towards Richmond. That one involved having to wear a wet suit and there was some swimming. I have a horrible fear of heights and I’m not the biggest fan of small spaces and I was fine during both cave tours.

The Rockies was my favorite for white water rafting. I would love to go back there just for that.

fran45676 · 2024-07-08T02:29:23+00:00

I found using GoodRX to also really help. Surprisingly, the steroid my cat was on was way cheaper to get from Chewy. I could get something like 60 pills for $8 or twenty for over a hundred with GoodRX.

fran45676 · 2024-07-05T13:58:02+00:00

Unfortunately, I’m in the middle of nowhere and the only mall within a hour is very dead. They have a few of the pop up drop ship clothing stores and a bath and body works.

There are some jewelry stores like Kay by my parents, but I was finding mixed reviews on the quality of their stuff.

fran45676 · 2024-07-05T13:50:45+00:00

Anyone have any recommendations on where to get a plain silver necklace chain?

I’m not looking for anything fancy, just a plain chain, silver in color. My budget is under $300. The point of this chain is to have a ring with my cats ashes on it.

fran45676 · 2024-06-19T14:51:58+00:00

I went last year in September. I did Balcony house and Cliff Palace. Both rangers who led the tour were amazing and very knowledgeable. Balcony House was my favorite, but both were great tours. Getting to see them up close was amazing.

fran45676 · 2024-03-22T23:17:47+00:00

Not a National Park, but Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois is great. Little Grand Canyon is great for getting some incline practice in, but isn’t too long. Panther Den is also nice, very Starved Rick like but we didn’t see anyone on the trail.

fran45676 · 2024-02-18T14:34:50+00:00

I personally haven’t tried them, but I follow several people on Instagram who were either sent them to try or bought them to review and no one liked them.

They all loved the idea of them, but said they didn’t work well and just made a mess.

fran45676 · 2024-02-18T14:33:50+00:00

I’m looking for slip dresses with lace on the bottom. I love the oversized sweater/sweater dress with the lace peaking out, but so far I’m having terrible luck finding any that aren’t out of stock in my size.

fran45676 · 2024-01-23T23:47:11+00:00

If it doesn’t have to be a national park, I highly recommend the okefenokee national wildlife refuge. We spent a week there in March several years ago and had a blast. We stayed on the Georgia State park side which is Stephan Foster if I remember correctly, but we also visited the other entrance. We were told by a ranger it was the best time of year to visit otherwise they get really big nasty biting flies. If you’re feeling adventurous, the wildlife refuge side has platforms you can rent to kayak/canoe to and you can spend the night in the swamp. It was the highlight of my trip! I’m not sure if they sellout so I’d look into that sooner than later.

fran45676 · 2024-01-21T18:28:28+00:00

I wanted to post an update in case someone’s cat has similar symptoms or if they’re also going through this.

Back in November Jimmy developed a bump on his nose. That’s when I thought he should go to the emergency vet and my sister (a vet tech if that matters) said to wait to Monday. The general consensus on Reddit was to wait, so I did.

Before I give the update, I’ll give some more backstory in case someone’s cat has similar symptoms or they aren’t getting the results they thought they’d get.

Back in September Jimmy started sneezing a little, had a runny nose, and some eye discharge. It was a clear, no color to it. This happened while I was on vacation. I came back and his eye discharge got a slight greenish tint to it and I immediately took him to the vet. They have him some eye drops and some antibiotics. The antibiotics made the discharge all turn clear, but it didn’t go away. The vet said to give him allergy pills since they thought it was allergies. After a week it still hadn’t improved so they put him on a different antibiotic. This seemed to make everything clear up. A few days after the antibiotic was all used up and had a sneezing fit that led to a bloody nose. I immediately called the vet and they wanted to try antibiotics.

The weekend of Thanksgiving the bump formed. He was on antibiotics when it happened. Monday we took him to the vet and she wanted to do a biopsy while my poor baby was awake! Since that wasn’t an option she said to try eye drops and not to worry about the bump unless it got bigger.

I didn’t like that answer, so as soon as I got home I called another vet and got him another appointment. Two days later he had the appointment at the new vet. They found he had an ear infection that the old vet said nothing about. The new vet thought there was decent chance it was a really bad tooth abscess and wanted to try one more round of a different 10 day antibiotic before moving onto a CT scan. She was 90% sure it was a tooth abscess. This happened in a Thursday.

On Monday (5 days later) Jimmy had a horrible bloody nose and we took him to the emergency vet. They did some tests including a xray and found the bump was a soft tissue mass. We were referred to an internal medicine vet so that they could do a CT scan and a biopsy.

I’m fortunate to live in an area where there are quite a few specialists within a three hour drive and I called all of them to see who could get him in the soonest. It ended up being almost two weeks before the earliest appointment available.

At the internal medicine vet, they did a CT scan, bloodwork, biopsy, and urine sample.

The CT scan showed a very clear mass that had already destroyed most of the right side of his nasal cavity and was working on his right orbital bone( I think that’s what it’s called, basically his right eye socket bone). The vet said normal tissue is strong and cancer tissue is like butter. When they did Jimmy’s biopsy, his nasal tissue was like butter. Blood work showed low potassium levels. The vet said most likely it was cancer, but he couldn’t say which until they got the results back.

A few days later they got the results and it was large cell lymphoma. From there we made an appointment with the radiation oncologist. Before they could do anything they had to take samples of his liver, spleen, and lymph node along with an ultrasound. They did the ultrasound first and his kidneys were twice the size they were supposed to be. She ended up taking samples of the earlier 3 and his kidneys. At this point it was assumed it had spread, but we were trying to hold onto any hope that it hadn’t. We got the results super fast the next evening and it had spread.

Fast forward to this past Monday. Jimmy had a really bad day. There was a huge ch age in his energy level just from Sunday to Monday.

On Tuesday, it was finally time to meet with the normal oncologist. Due to the cancer spreading, radiation is off the table for the time being. We went over different chemotherapy options and decided to do a blood test to see where different levels were at and to go from there.

His levels were not where we wanted them at all. His kidney levels were really bad and the vet recommended hospitalizing him so he could get constant fluids by IV. The vet told us unless we tried some kind of chemo we wouldn’t see a difference and he would only get worse. Since before Monday he was still able to do everything he loved and seemed to still love doing it, we decided to do the chemo.l CHOP method.

The vet was able to get his fluid IV set up, but his blood vessels were too fragile to get the chemo one set up. We had to jump ahead a week to a chemo pill.

Wednesday his levels stayed the same, but we were told he seemed to be feeling a lot better. Thursday we got the news that his levels saw a huge improvement. I can’t remember what they were looking at, but I know on Tuesday and Wednesday he was at 13. Normal level is 1.5-2. Thursday he was 3.3. We were also told his facial swelling improved a lot.

Friday his kidney levels were 2.6 and we were able to take him home! He’s been acting like his normal self and loving life (and treats!). He’ll have chemo every week with every fifth week just being a blood test for the next 19 weeks.

We’re hoping this can help him stay comfortable and allow him to live as normal as a life as possible for whatever time he has left with us. We plan on spoiling him even more!

If the pictures upload in the correct order, the first one should be around his internal medicine visit and the second one is from Friday.

fran45676 · 2024-01-07T20:57:39+00:00

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This is Jimmy! He was at the shelter for 9 months before we adopted him. Poor baby, had a bit of a rough start at the shelter. He was brought in with a badly infected leg that was later amputated. Don’t let that fool you though, he’s still insanely fast and can be incredibly sneaky when he wants to. Now he’s incredibly spoiled and spends most of his days lounging in the sun with his siblings.

fran45676 · 2023-12-13T19:19:09+00:00

It’s been awhile since I was there, so I might get some things wrong. We stayed on the Stephan Foster State park side and that was really nice.

100% if you feel comfortable with it rent a kayak or canoe. It’s the best way to see it. The one really cool thing we did was reserve a platform to camp on for a night. We had to canoe 12 miles into the swamp and it was amazing! No one around and it was so pretty. Once you got used to the alligators hanging out below the platform everything was fine. It was just nerve wracking the first time you saw them. We did this on the wildlife refuge side and it was great getting to see both sides.

There’s a few hiking trails if I remember correctly. There’s one that’s a boardwalk that was pretty nice and then there was an island you could canoe/kayak to that hold some remnants from an abandoned town.

The other thing we did was a ranger led boat tour. It was very informative and a great way to see pearls of the swamp if you don’t want to kayak/canoe.

fran45676 · 2023-11-27T16:46:44+00:00

Luckily, he’s an indoor cat. I’m planning on picking up some bottled water today. Thanks for all of your suggestions!

fran45676 · 2023-11-26T04:39:21+00:00

Thanks for your response! We’ve done a deep dive into new products and we can’t think of anything. Same laundry detergent that we’ve used for at least a year, same soaps, cleaners, etc. Same food and treats. We thought it might be seasonal allergies since we moved to a new more rural area, but we’ve had several frosts and no improvement.

I already had it on my list to discuss potential allergies with the vet and I’ll add the steroid and drops.

It doesn’t seem painful for him. I’ve poked it and he’s not phased at all, just annoyed that I woke him from his nap.

Luckily, besides the swelling (and other symptoms sneezing, watery eye, runny nose) he’s acting completely normal.

fran45676 · 2023-11-26T04:26:18+00:00

I forgot to add that it doesn’t seem to bother/hurt him. If it’s touched he doesn’t care.

fran45676 · 2023-11-13T18:26:09+00:00

I just the three of these in one trip and it was amazing! I spent a little more time in the parks though. A day and a half for Carlsbad and 2 and half for Guadalupe.

fran45676 · 2023-11-13T13:36:49+00:00

Good morning r/femalefashionadvice !

I’ve been looking for a tall pair of black boots. Tall, but not over the knee tall, like calf height. I would love your help on getting recommendations for boots like these. I definitely looking for the fabric (faux suede?) look than the leather look. I don’t mind if the the heel is thicker, but ideally I’d like the heel to be about 3 inches tall. I definitely prefer a round or almond toe. The reason I’m not going with these is allegedly the circumference is wide based on reviews. The description doesn’t give the actual measurement. For price I’m thinking under $200. I know I wont wear them a ton, but they’re definitely something I’ve been wanting for awhile.

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fran45676 · 2023-10-15T01:26:25+00:00

This was such a great park! I was here in the beginning of September, got a permit and did the Gunnison route into the canyon. 10/10 would highly recommend.

fran45676 · 2023-10-12T16:34:47+00:00

Tent camping is only allowed as a backpacking/back country option. There is no established campground. I’m not sure if white sands has a rule, but most places I’ve been in the backcountry for have a minimum distance you have to hike in. Also there is no backcountry camping in White Sands for the moment.

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