BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. (DDN) – Animal advocate Jacey Birch recently investigated reports that a cat died after having a blood transfusion of canine blood from a South Florida animal hospital, and she is now doing a follow-up inquiry into Leader Animal Specialty Hospital.
This time, she sat down with a devastated woman who claimed her dog had surgery to remove an organ, only to discover it was still present!
“I can tell you, they did not help us,” Susan Wilder stated. “I feel like they screwed us big time, and I’m distraught over it — my whole family is — and I’m still having nightmares.”
Wilder is upset after taking her German Shepherd, Kodak, to an animal hospital in Broward County for emergency treatment. She claims she was immediately offered an ultimatum. “His gut twisted, and he only had a limited amount of time. He might not make it. “We need to perform emergency surgery,” Wilder was told.
Wilder alleges she maxed out all of her credit cards, costing approximately $9,000, to save Kodak. “She stated that she worked on Kodak. He was in the ICU, doing well, and he made it through surgery. “He was bleeding internally, his spleen had ruptured, so she performed a splenectomy,” Wilder explained.
The doctor’s notes for June 15, 2023, clearly mention that a splenectomy was performed at 2 a.m. However, the findings indicate that the spleen, like other organs, is “unremarkable.”
However, a week after surgery, Kodak became ill again, prompting Wilder to call the animal hospital.
“I was told, ‘Well, if you come back, you’ll have to start over and pay,’ and I said, ‘This is the post-op, he just had surgery a week ago.'” I said, ‘I can’t afford it. I maxed out all of my cards. I do not have any more money. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about that; call your vet,'” Wilder replied.
She did, and over $2,000 later, Kodak was determined to have an infection that required an aggressive round of antibiotics. However, a few months later, there was another emergency. It was after hours again, so Wilder returned to Leader.
“After I paid all that money, he had all these staples in his stomach and couldn’t walk, so my daughter and I had to lift him,” Wilder recalled.
Wilder couldn’t hide her distress as she described how she discovered Kodak still had his spleen.
“The on-call vet at Leader’s facility that saw Kodak, she said she looked at it and there’s definitely a spleen there,” said Wilder. “She said she sent the X-rays out, and a radiologist read them and said, ‘The spleen is there.'” And she said, ‘I don’t understand,’ because she had read the notes, and she said she sent for a second read, and a different radiologist said the spleen was there, and my own vet looked at the X-rays and said, ‘Yeah, it’s right there.'”
The radiology services report dated late December 2023 states in black and white that the spleen is normal in size and shape.
Birch went to the animal hospital’s new site in Boca Raton, which opened a few weeks ago, and requested to speak with Dr. Horgan about Kodak.
But, much like when she went to the Cooper City office to inquire about the blood transfusion for Robert the cat, she was turned away with no explanation.
Kodak is now eight years old. He enjoys playing with his ball and brother, but Wilder will never really understand what happened to the dog she considers her kid.
“I do not comprehend. “I never received an answer,” she remarked through tears. “We’re trying to give him the best life that we can, and we will continue until it’s his time to go.”
Birch later spoke with Horgan by phone. He stated that he would like to perform an ultrasound on Kodak for no charge to determine what happened to the spleen in this situation.
At this time, he believes a very unusual medical condition known as splenosis occurred, which essentially implies that spleen tissue may have regrown in the dog’s body.
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