BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. – Local 10 animal advocate Jacey Birch recently delved into allegations of a cat dying after receiving a blood transfusion of dog blood from a South Florida animal hospital, and now she is back with a follow-up investigation into Leader Animal Specialty Hospital.
This time, she sat down with a distraught woman who claimed her dog underwent surgery to have an organ removed, only to find out it is still there!
“I can tell you, they did not help us,” Susan Wilder said. “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 devastated after taking her German Shepherd named Kodak to the animal hospital in Broward County for emergency services. She says she was immediately given an ultimatum.
“‘His stomach twisted and he only has a certain amount of time. He might not make it. We have to do emergency surgery,’” Wilder said she was told.
Wilder claims she maxed out all her credit cards to the cost of nearly $9,000 to save Kodak.
“She said that she operated on Kodak. He was in ICU, he was doing very well, he did good, he made it through surgery. He was bleeding internally, his spleen had ruptured, she did a splenectomy,” Wilder explained.
In the doctor notes recorded on June 15, 2023, it clearly states a splenectomy was performed at 2 a.m.
But it also states in the findings that the spleen, along with other organs, is “unremarkable.”
But a week after surgery, Kodak was sick again so Wilder called the animal hospital.
“I was told, ‘Well, if you come back, you’re going to have to start all over again and pay,’ and I said, ‘This is the post-op, he just had surgery a week ago.’ I said, ‘I can’t afford to pay. I maxed out all my cards. I don’t have any more money.’ ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it -- call your vet,’” Wilder said.
She did, and nearly $2,000 later, Kodak was discovered to have an infection and needed an extreme round of antibiotics.
But just a few months later, there was another emergency. It was after-hours again, so Wilder went back to Leader.
“After I paid all that money and he had all these staples in his stomach and he couldn’t walk, and my daughter and I had to lift him,” Wilder said.
Wilder couldn’t hold back her anguish as she explained how she found out 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,” Wilder said. “She said she sent the X-rays out and a radiologist had to read it and he 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 that a different radiologist said the spleen is there and my own vet looked at the X-rays and goes, ‘Yeah, it’s right there.’”
The radiology services report from late December 2023 says in black and white that the spleen is normal in size and shape.
Birch went to the animal hospital’s new location in Boca Raton that opened a few weeks ago and asked to speak with Dr. Horgan about Kodak.
But much like when she went to the Cooper City location to find out about the blood transfusion for Robert the cat, she was turned away with no explanation.
Kodak is now 8 years old. He loves playing with his ball and his brother, but Wilder will never truly know what happened to the dog she calls her child.
“I don’t understand. I never got an answer,” she said 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 to Horgan by phone. He said he would like to do an ultrasound on Kodak at no charge to determine what actually happened to the spleen in this case.
At this point, he said he thinks a very rare medical condition called splenosis may have occurred, which basically means spleen tissue could have possibly regrown in the dog’s body.
