My wife and I visited VEG Brookhaven in mid-November when my dog was viciously attacked by another…read moredog during a nighttime walk. It was an extremely traumatic experience for both me and my wife. While the nurses were all nice enough, our grievances primarily lie with the doctor who was responsible for our dog's care that night: Brina Baker.
She was immediately unapproachable, despite the awfulness of the situation. I calmly tried to explain what happened as soon as she introduced herself, at which point she instantly cut me off, saying curtly that she would conduct her own examination of my dog.
She then gave me a quick assessment of what she thought would need to be done with our dog that night, and then got visibly irritated when I asked her to repeat what she had told me to my wife, who was nearly inconsolable over the phone and on her way to VEG (our dog was bleeding and had suffered several bites from a large pit; he is a miniature goldendoodle).
Her exact words were something to the effect of, "keep your wife on the phone so I don't have to keep repeating myself."
The nurse took our dog away for some x-rays and diagnostics, the results of which were never explained to us, as our dog was immediately put under anesthesia and placed on the operating table.
We did agree to have him put under and have his wounds seen to but didn't realize we'd be in the dark as to what the x-rays showed, and what exactly was going to be done to him. Dr. Baker had initially said that she was going to determine what she'd do after the x-rays were taken, because it was only then that we would see whether the attacking dog's bite marks had perforated the abdominal wall.
When we tried to ask about what the prognosis was, and what Dr. Baker was doing to him--even after she had told us we could come up and watch them operate on him on the table--she tersely refused to explain anything until the operation was over, and no one bothered to explain how bad our dog's injuries were prior to that point either.
DURING the operation, while my wife and I were sitting completely distraught in a corner of the ER, Dr. Baker laughed and joked with the nurses in the building while suturing our dog and installing a drain in his stomach. At one point, she loudly stated, "I've never done this before" to one of the other employees. Whether this referred to installing a drain or installing that specific kind of drain in that way, we did not know, but this was EXTREMELY troubling.
At one point, she also shouted at a nurse an order for a certain amount of medication, which was relayed incorrectly back to her, and which she confirmed anyway. Luckily, a third nurse heard the discrepancy and corrected it, at which point Dr. Baker laughed it off flippantly. At this point, my wife and I had no faith in her, but decided to keep quiet since our dog was under her knife.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the drain that Dr. Baker installed was put in so haphazardly (this was confirmed by both our primary vet and a specialist) that our dog developed an abscess and inflamed lymph nodes around where the procedure took place, which also led to a limp in his front left leg, due to further inflammation of lymph nodes in his arm resulting from infection. We have been told that the drain was not only too big but also oriented incorrectly.
Not only did we pay nearly $2,500 the night that we visited VEG, but we were also emotionally tormented by Dr. Baker's flippancy, uncommunicativeness, and utter lack of compassion, as well as left with enduring health complications that we are still dealing with as a result of how she botched his wound treatment.
At this point, we are evaluating our options as far as how to get justice for how we and our dog were treated, as we believe he was the victim of malpractice. For the amount of money we paid the night we came in (and VEG, as an ER, is extremely expensive), we deserved better from both a veterinary and an interpersonal perspective.