My Vet Killed My Claim

After about a solid week of obsessing over my suspicion that Nikko was poisoned by evil corporatists, I recieved a shocking blow from, of all people, the vet who treated, diagnosed and eventually euthenized my beloved akita. This, more than anything accounts for my lack of updating here, but I'll try to summarize events of the last week as best I can.

Later in the morning of Thursday, Mar. 29, I made several attempts to contact Angerla Edwards at the FDA, to no avail. I had read here that as well as filing a complaint myself, I should ask my vet to file a report with the 'State Veterinarian's Office' (it says in a later edit that the AMVA has since reversed that recommendation).

So I called the animal hospital, Arboretum View in Lisle Il., to see if they knew anything about that. I spoke to a manager there, Michelle, who kindly spent a great deal of time with me discussing the issue. She told me that our vet was in, but busy, and she would ask the doctor to call me back later.

I tried to stay awake as long as I could to try to take the call. I was unsuccessful, but I did recieve a call from another source on the subject at 01:15 that afternoon.

It showed up as 'PRIVATE' on the called ID, but as I had so many irons in the fire I took it. It was Roger Clark of Nutro! And boy was he bending over backwards to tell me how everyone at Nutro and all of their brothers and their sisters and their cousins were just devestated and heartbroken and shocked and most of all blindsided by this horrible tragedy. To be honest, I had forgotten that I had sent details of Nikko's demise to Nutro via a contact form on their website, before I had decided to go right at Menu Foods themselves, and Roger was calling in response to that.

I hate to sound like I'm being cynical in making Mr. Clark out to sound like some glad-handing politician, because he had a thankless task to perform, and he was doing it as best he could. I can't imagine that he didn't come in for quite a bit of abuse from bereaved pet owners in more than a few of the calls. He did take a good deal of time with me, though he was, I believe, semi-scripted.

He did ask me for details of the products we had fed Nikko, and then he asked if I had any left. I told him I did. He then asked if I would send it to him, and when I laughed he indicated that he "had to ask".

He also informed me that I would be hearing from The Hartford Insurance company in regards to any claims (though more than a week later that hasn't happened, nor have I heard a peep from Crawford & Co.)

After doing his diligence, we then took some time to discuss the situation generally, because, well, we're 'family' to them... I told him that from what I'd seen on the internets Nutro would probably like to get off the lists of companies that do business with Menu Foods ASAP. While he couldn't speak to that officially, due to contractural issues, he did indicate that it was in the air.

He showered me with adequate sympathy, and empathized via the old salesman's game of "I have this same model at home". Why, he found cases of the recalled products right in his own pantry! The outrage!

Honestly, kudos to Nutro for actually reaching out... when I did eventually speak to Angela from the FDA and mentioned the call, she informed me that I was the first person she'd spoken to to have actually been contacted by any of the 'responsible'parties.

So enough about that- I finally turned in, and woke up at about 07:30pm. My wife told me that the vet had called back and left a message which said, essentially, that she felt confident in her diagnosis that cause of death was liver cancer, and not from the recalled food. And I'm not a vet and I can't argue with that, and you can be sure that any and all claims will be denied on that basis alone.

But I'm going to go forward anyways, and let the chips fall where they may.

Sears Killed my Birds!

Ironically, I've been down this road before. In 1997, we lost three birds (two parakeets and a cockatiel) to phosgene gas poisoning. This noxious element was used in chemical warfare during WWI, and also happens to be a byproduct of superheated teflon.

Simply put, our new- at the time- Kenmore oven, with its Teflon interior, emmited phosgene gas when in self-cleaning mode. Now when it was installed my wife asked the installer- in the course of being instructed in the oven's use- if there was any hazard for pets during self-cleaning, and he stated flatly that there was none. Nor was any warning given in the manual.

In retrospect the reason for this ommission seems obvious; if you give a warning of a potentially lethal hazard from an everyday occurrance like self-cleaning an oven, a wily consumer might start to wonder, "hmmm... if it can kill my birds, what can it do to my children?" Apparently these day there are warnings in the manuals, but I doubt they mention phosgene specifically.

So one November day my wife calls me at work, sobbing; the birds were all dead! Well not all- Diablo, her quaker parrot (pictured) weathered the attack, however both budgies and the cockatiel were all sadly deceased.

Sears made absolutely no bones about accepting responsibility, though they took pains to inform me that in the world of corporate liability pets are considered as 'property', and therefore their only liability was for the 'cost to replace'. Still, they cut me a check at the Service Desk where we bought the range the next day! It was about $180, and I used it to buy an N64 for my son for Christmas.

The Trail So Far, Pt. 2

Yesterday, sometime in the afternoon of Wed Mar 28, we recieved a message on our answering machine. Angela Edwards of the Chicago FDA Office will assist me with filing a Consumer Complaint against Menu Foods. I'm going to call her back at the provided # later on this morning, and I'll update later.

But Wait- Didn't Nikko Die of Liver Cancer?

In the initial post of this blog I described briefly the events on the evening that Nikko was euthenized, but I only told part of the story. Here's the whole account, in the interest of honesty and full disclosure.

For a couple of months prior to his death, Nikko had begun to lose weight. My wife, a nurse by proffession and sensitive to these things, noticed and commented on it. Sometime in December of 2006 she began to buy Nutro canned dog food. We had two dogs, Nikko and Garrick, a border collie, and we had always fed them Nutro dry food. Garrick is a bit on the heavy side, and really didn't need "extra" nutrition, and she would often feed Nikko the canned food separately from him, although she did give Garrick some of the canned from time-to-time (to keep his nose in joint).

On Saturday, Feb 17, as we were leaving the house my wife made a sadly prescient comment about Nikko; "I don't know what I'd do if anything ever happened to that dog...". She had noticed a change in his demeanor, and was worried that he was getting sick.

On Sunday he was showing definite signs of not feeling well; he wasn't his usual bouncy self, and he was particularly needy of attention. He was asking to go outside at odd hours.

By Monday he was clearly ill. We had seen similar behavior in the past, usually about once a year, and it was always a case of "something-he-ate", and would pass in a few days with antibiotics and a bland diet of ground beef and rice. In this case she continued feeding him the Nutro canned - "Nutro Natural Choice Large Breed Adult Lamb & Rice Formula Chunks in Gravy", to be precise. In fact it was all that he would eat- nothing else that was offered would he touch. He was also unusually thirsty.

On that fateful Tuesday, as I noted, he wouldn't even lay down, but sat there wobbling pathetically, eyes half open, because he was exhausted and wanted to sleep. I work nights and sleep during the day, usually after noon-ish. However I sat up late into the afternoon with him, and he couls barely stand, or navigate the stairs.. I finally went to sleep at about 3pm.

My wife woke me up at about 7pm to inform me that she had made an appointment for him with our regular Vet in Lombard for the next afternoon, and that I would have to take him. I asked her if there was a 24-hour Vet, and she said there was one in Lisle, about 1.5 miles from our house. We decided to take him right then...

Flash forward to the consultation room- the Vet, Dr. Sample, has informed us that Nikko is in shock and renal failure, for inderterminate reasons. His kidneys have shut down catastrophicly, and he needs to be stabilized, via transfusions and fluids, before they can even diagnose a cause. We're offered the most difficult, grim choice; commit to about $6000 worth of treatment (with 25% up-front required to begin treatment) with no guaranteed outcome, or 'humane euthenasia'.

We discussed it for a short while, and then asked if we could get a revised "24-hour estimate" (their terminology) to begin trying to save him, and they agree. The revised paperwork includes work totalling around $2400 for the initial 24-hours treatment. We were allowed to go into the ER and see him before going home.

We were home for about 20 minutes when the Dr. Sample called us and informed my wife that an MRI had discovered tumors on his liver, which was itself enlarged. It was decided at that point to euthenize him, we returned to the hospital, and at about 11:32pm that night it was done.

Those are the 'clinical' facts, and of course at the time we hadn't even heard of Menu Foods, or chinese rat poison. And I supposed that it can be pointed out that the revelations of liver cancer can damage my claim that it was their poison food that killed my dog, but after the claim is in process they will see these facts in the records in anyway, so there's no point in me hiding them.

In fact it wasn't until days after I'd heard about the pet foods recall- and dismissed them- that I read that a major symptom of the posioning was kidney failure, which was the first diagnostic expression from the vet's mouth to us- "shock and renal failure".

I began to wonder... but surely the recall involved cute-rate generic brands from Wal-Mart, right? It was my wife who shortly thereafter confirmed that Nutro Brands were on the list, and that we indeed had cans of the tainted food in our kitchen that very moment (I still have them now, of course).

So my Nikko was ill with undiagnosed liver cancer. It probably accounts for the weight loss, it may probably have made him more susecptible to the poisoning, but it does not excuse the fact that he was fed poison from a trusted source, and suffered and died because of it.

I don't want to get rich from a claim against Menu Foods, nor do I wish for punitive damages (I don't want to have to sue them, in other words), I simply want to be reimbursed for the treatment, and the cost to replace. I can write off my grief and my many tears- which still come to this day over that wonderful animal- as the price of sharing the planet with 'corporate-citizens' who'll do anything for a buck. This shit happens every day... as they say in Mother Russia, "some days you eat the bear, other days the bear eat you".

And People Too!

UPI is reporting that an Ottowa woman who ate recalled Iams dog food became ill..

Larabie said when she contacted Iams, the company confirmed the food she and the dog ate was affected by the recall and likely was contaminated with rodent-killing chemical sprayed on Chinese wheat. She said the company assured her they will cover her medical bills and she hasn't decided yet whether to sue.

The Trail So Far, pt1

Here is a current record of the calls I've made so far, and responses (the purpose of these posts is not to enlighten or entertain; they are meant merely as a record of my contacts, for easy future reference).

On Friday Mar 23 at 09:37cst, I called the Nutro Menu Foods Recall Hotline at 1-800-833-5330. It played a recorded message that essentially refered me back to the website that had given me the number in the first place.

At 09:51cst I called the Chicago District Office of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), at 1-312-353-7840. I pressed "4" for Consumer Complaints, and listened to a recorded message from Kathy Haas, regarding Recall concerns. I left a pretty detailed explanation of our circumstance, and a call-back number.

After reading this article I tried the two Menu Foods numbers it referenced, at 10:38cst

1-866-463-6738, no answer, no nothing. However when I dialed 1-866-895-2708 I did speak to an operator named Renee. She asked me for the brand and type etc. of the dog food we'd fed Nikko. I have three cans that are on this list from Nutro; I gave the UPC codes to Renee one by one, and one by one she informed me that they were NOT on the list. I then directed her to that particular site.

After then agreeing that the products I have were on that list, Renee took my contact information, expressed her sympathy for our loss, and said someone would contact me.

On Tuesday March 27 I called again to the 1-866-463-6738 number to follow-up, at 11:05cst. I spoke with an operator named Andrea. She started to ask me all the scripted questions about product, and I cut her off and explained that I'd already spoken to someone and been promised a call-back. She said that if I'd called on Friday then I was already out of their "system", i.e. my info had been passed along to the entity that is handling their claims.

I expressed incredulity that they would not have a record of my call and the taking of my info etc, and could we check that my info was indeed "in the queue" so I knew I would get a callback. She put me on hold, and after about two minutes someone else picked up, and then I was disconnnected.

Shortly thereafter I tried the FDA again, and left Ms. Haas another message.

Then at 11:37 I recieved a call from a number in the 519 area code. It was a recorded message from a representative of Crawford and Company informing me that they are handling claims. I will need to have information regarding the products we'd used, and to expect a call within 72 hours...

Nikko Bosatzu- b. Mar 2001, d. Feb 2007

On the evening of Feb 20 2007, we took our 5 year old akita, Nikko, to the emergency vet in Lisle IL. He had been acting sick for a couple of days, growing obviously weaker and more lethargic by the hour. By the afternoon of that Tuesday he could hardly stand up and walk around, though he seemed to prefer sitting to lying down (as if he could not get comfortable unless sitting up). Before we took him, we gathered a stool sample from outside, and noticed that his urine was root beer brown (there was snow on the ground).

At the vet he could not even walk onto the lowered gurney they brought to take him upstairs, and had to be lifted onto it. After about 20 minutes my wife, my son and myself were ushered into an examining room. The doctor came in and said, "Your dog is in shock and renal failure, and we don't know why".

She went on to explain that in order to diagnose his condition they would need to first stabilize him via a blood transfusion and fluids, and that once that was done and the tests to diagonse were done we were looking at at least 3-6000 dollars worth of treatment over the next 3-5 days, and even then she wasn't sure he could be saved.

Nikko was humanely euthenized later that evening, for a reasonable 1800 dollars. That's just the financial cost, and it isn't the entire story. But they are the salient points...