Sasha's Daycare by Balahoth

On August 4th 2023, a few months after releasing this song (originally not named after Sasha and just a little song I made while I was on a call with my friends), my entire life turned upside down when my sweet little boy Sasha was diagnosed with FIP - Feline Infectious Peritonitis. FIP is a quite rare but deadly mutation of the extremely common feline coronavirus (FCoV), and until recently, was - simply put - a death sentence. The medication, called GS-441524, is not approved for veterinary use in most parts of the world, making getting it legally almost impossible. There were only 2 providers of GS in my country and, to quote our vet: "one of them is a crazy bitch", so we basically only had one option. At first, the provider could not handle any new requests because of the sheer amount of them they already had, but somehow, we managed to convince them to let us get Sasha's medication from them. Obviously, this whole ordeal was not cheap at all. It all totaled to thousands of dollars worth of treatment excluding vet visits prior to Sasha's diagnosis (we originally thought he had a liver disease which resulted in many visits and useless medications) and the vet's routine (one shot per day for 84 days) administration of the medication (Sasha did not like when I did it myself, to put it lightly). I reached out on my Instagram account, thinking maybe one or two people will share the song around and help us battle the unbelievable costs of his treatment, and immediately I began getting messages of support from both people I have known for years and people I have never talked to. Then, I began getting emails from Bandcamp saying people have bought the song and other songs I released. You would expect them to buy them for 1-3 dollars as most people usually do, but we are talking about around 20 or more dollars each!! I was simply shocked at just how much people were willing to help my little boy, even if the total amount of money gained from it did not cover a significant part of the costs, we're still talking about a large sum of money, and it wasn't something a person like me thought could happen at all. I documented every day (well, actually 83 out of 84 days) Sasha got his GS shot with a little commentary on how he's doing, and with every day, he seemed to get better and better. I saw him start eating and drinking again, running around the house again, and being the single most annoying shithead, unbelievably stupid excuse for a living creature to ever walk this earth again. He became himself again. And no words could ever, ever describe my gratitude for that. He could have died without us even knowing he had FIP. My parents could have succumbed to other people's "suggestions" to euthanize him. His body could have rejected the medication. But it didn't. My little Sasha is here to stay! And again, no absurd amount of words or expressions could ever capture one hundredth of the gratitude I feel towards everyone who helped me get through this, both mentally and financially. That is seriously not to be taken for granted. So once again, I am eternally thankful for all of you.

Sasha finished his shots on October 26th, 2023.
His observation period ended on January 18th, 2024, making him officially cured.

-A

One man music project from Acre, Israel.