I have never before been compelled to leave a negative review on an establishment or business, but after an awful experience my family and I had a few months back, I feel that it is necessary and will hopefully prevent other families from enduring the same ordeal.
My family and I took our healthy, 2 year old female cat to this vet several months back when we noticed that she was having trouble eating (would chew a piece, drop it, generally have trouble with her mouth). We monitored her for a while and the symptoms disappeared, but just to be safe, we brought her in anyway. After finding Bethany Animal Hospital's listing online, we decided to bring her here. The bad experiences started almost as soon as we walked through the door.
We signed in and sat down. There was no one else in the room aside from us and seemingly no one currently being seen in a back, yet it still took almost 20 minutes before we were called back. After talking to the nurse for a while, the doctor came in. We told her about our cat's issues with eating, and how they've improved recently, but we were being cautious. First thing she did was check her teeth and said she had a little gingivitis, but could tell us nothing else alarmingly wrong. And so, she suddenly decided that she wanted to give our cat a full body exam (liver, stomach, lungs, etc. etc.. Which confused me entirely) as well as a leukemia test. After she decided this without our consultation, we asked how much it'd cost - It was well over $200 dollars. Being naive at the time, we just asked if she'd do the testings that she wanted to do. And so she took our cat back for the testings.
As we waited for the result, we sat in the waiting room.. for almost a full hour. Two other people came in during this time, were taken back, and one had even came and went within the time we were waiting. All this time later, she comes out and calls us into the waiting room, only to spring this surprise on us; Apparently our cat has leukemia. Obviously we were all horrified and tears were shed, especially once she began to go into ""detail"" about how ""urgently sick"" she was and how it was important to get her put down. As we stood there trying to ask what leukemia was exactly, the doctor was practically scheduling to have our cat put down FOR US. She didn't tell us about the super high risk of false-positives in leukemia tests, nor did she tell us the importance of doing at least three tests two months apart, nor did she tell us that leukemia positive cats can live full and happy lives despite having the disease. Nope, she just told us to put her down. Needless to say, we left.
When we took her home, that's when I began doing research and found out what I found. After a few months with there being no change in her positive health, we took her to another vet and had her retested. Big Surprise!, She came back negative. MANY months later, she is still fine, whatever problem she had with her teeth never reoccurred.
I'm not mad at the vet for the false-positive leukemia test. I'm mad at her because instead of telling us the truth about the ""disease"", she instantly began to urge us to kill our healthy cat. And i'm also mad at her for the fact that as soon as she realized she didn't know why my cat had a two day long tooth issue, she decided to throw expensive tests and unnecessary exams at her. It was obvious to all of us and the next vet we took her to that the vet at Bethany Home Animal Hospital was only trying to take advantage of our horror, heartbreak and agony for a few more extra bucks.
The experience I had here has left me feeling traumatized and has made me have extreme anxiety when it comes to all vets. As before this, we never thought about being taken advantage of by the people we depend on to aid our babies. Our pet is still going brilliantly to this day. I sincerely hope that this vet's greed hasn't SUCCESSFULLY taken advantage of another family before. One of the most awful experiences of my life.
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