I strongly caution all pet owners against coming here. I'm flabbergasted that I have to write this…read morereview at all. In no world do I want this to happen to anyone else, so I'm going to detail what happened -- and why you should not trust Dr. Gallagher, or this practice at large. In this account, I'm going to be giving an exact timetable pulled both from the histories and clinical notes provided. Everything herein is factual and documented.
On 17 March, we brought my cat Sammy in for a fecal impaction. For months prior, we had been well aware of - and dealing with -- carcinoma in his face that we knew would eventually see us euthanizing him. Our concern was giving him the best quality of life, and we had even planned with our usual vet to have them come to our home when the time came. When we came in on the 17th, it was merely for the treatment of the impaction -- nothing else. He was given an enema and discharged with another enema to give him in the night. Unfortunately, he was impacted again, so we were forced to bring him in again the following morning.
On the 18th, we returned with the intention of getting him another enema. It is at this point that we are told, loudly and in front of a full lobby, that our only options for Sammy were to give him the enema under anesthesia or euthanize him then and there. Note that we were NEVER told outright by the locum vet that putting him under anesthesia would kill him. Remember this; the distinction will come back later.
It turned out that they needed to keep Sammy overnight after the disimpaction. The locum rang us at 6:19PM for an update. This is where the locum steps out, and Gemma Gallagher steps in. We picked him up again at 5:30 the following morning. When we took him out of his carrier at home -- as we were rushed out of the practice by Dr. Gallagher without doing so (remember this, too) -- it was clear that Sammy was dying. Labored breathing, disorientation, a disinterest in food and water; meanwhile, according to Dr. Gallagher's startlingly minimal clinical notes, Sammy had been "brighter in himself" when she released him to us. This, clearly, is not the case. We sat on the floor of our kitchen with him until our regular vet opened at 8 o'clock, and Sammy was dead by 9. We were despondent, obviously, but more so wildly confused at how Dr. Gallagher's assessment of him could be so wrong. So we got copies of her clinical notes.
The lack of history taken overnight is, in a word, negligent. The last observations at the Pet Emergency Hospital that we have numerical values for are from 12:31AM on the 18th of March. His behavior would have been grossly abnormal, and not "brighter" as noted at 5:28AM. It is not possible that Sammy's vitals would have been normal at the time of his discharge with the obvious respiratory distress he was in. We were later told that had Sammy's condition been noted, he could and would have been admitted to UCD vet hospital -- had appropriate measures been taken to monitor him.
We filed a complaint with the VCI and received Dr. Gallagher's response shortly after, in which she blatantly falsified information. First, she claimed that we took him out of his carrier on the morning of his death and interacted with him. We did not. Secondly, Dr. Gallagher claimed in her rebuttal that we were told outright by the locum that putting him under anesthesia for the administration of an enema would kill him. She claimed on official record that we made this fatal decision. So not only has this vet failed to monitor Sammy, take appropriate clinical notes to show that she is in fact doing her job, and released him to us under the false claim that he was fit to do so -- but she has also, at this point, done her very best to throw us under the bus and foist blame onto anyone other than herself.
Sammy gets no justice here, and I am distraught. But if I can do one thing -- for Sammy, and for anyone else in our position -- it would be to warn anyone and everyone away from her, and away from any practice that she may be at. Please give your furry friends some love for Sammy.
