Very long story short
It’s natural when you have been through the mill to want to recount all the details but in this case I will only state the salient facts.
A couple of months ago, our dog, Merlin, was experiencing pain in his rear leg which was diagnosed as a partial cruciate ligament tear. Options on how to treat this were discussed with Medivet and we did have a proposed plan of surgery.
In the interim, we were offered a steroid injection into the painful area and this was administered. A few days later, we reported to Medivet that he was suffering from quite severe nausea and vomiting. The diagnosis was that it was either possible that the steroid had in part infiltrated his blood stream or that it was a reaction to the steroid and another ibuprofen based medication he had been prescribed for pain. There were no concerns for his well being.
Merlin continued to go downhill – off his food, sickly, not well at all. There were several more appointments at Medivet at this stage and the diagnosis was repeated as a reaction to his medication. Meanwhile, we had googled his symptoms, especially post the steroid and there were very clear indicators for damage to the pancreas. This was raised with the vet who said we could check via bloods the next week.
We continued to be very worried about Merlin and asked Heene Road to see him within that same week. They had no room but referred us to their Littlehampton branch where he saw a vet. She appeared to concur with the diagnosis of a meds interaction. She changed his pain medication. We have a very big issue with the treatment we received there. Our experience was that after a significant wait, which we didn’t mind, we had an appointment with the vet that lasted no less than 5 minutes and we consider far less than 10. We recall being very shocked at how cursory the examination was but when Merlin’s notes were requested by his new vet and shared with us, the Medivet vet and ourselves seem to have a very different recollection of how long and thorough that appointment was. Her written account didn’t match our recollection of the experience.
The end result was that Merlin was admitted to the new vet’s hospital on a Sunday morning, two days after speaking to Medivet about him, because he was desperately ill over the Saturday night. He was a very sick dog and no one expected him to survive. He was diagnosed with Necrotising Pancreatitis and spent 5 nights in the dog hospital (not under Medivet). They saved his life. We feel that had we stayed with Medivet who failed to identify how very sick he was, he wouldn’t be here now. He is still a sick dog but seems to be coping well at the moment.
We do feel that had Medivet diagnosed him correctly sooner, he may not have been as terribly sick as he now is. We have reached out to Medivet for their comments which, as you would rightly expect, were received as an explanation of his treatment and the decisions behind it. The last communication we had with Medivet was us asking for details of who to make a complaint to regarding the Littlehampton care, to which we have received no response.
