Author: Lisa S of Ohio
Pet: Bodhi
Breed: Boston Terrier
Surgery date: April of 2014 (the same month as the eye surgery on Peanut)
Surgeons: Steve Sisler and Kimberly Hsu (resident) of Eye Care for Animals

We first learned of Lisa’s experience with Eye Care for Animals (and Steve Sisler) from a Yelp review posted June 17, 2014. Her review may still be available under the “not currently recommended reviews” on Yelp. FYI — All that means is that she doesn’t write enough reviews for Yelp to keep all her reviews as “recommended.” Here is what Lisa wrote in her initial review followed by some further information she shared with us via email.

“Took our dog [to Eye Care for Animals] to have surgery on a torn retina. Was told he had an 85-90% chance of restoring vision. My dog has only one eye, so we really wanted to save it. The odds were in our favor. Two months out and my dog is still not seeing a thing. I can’t even express my disappointment. My husband drove from Ohio to IL to have this surgery, had 10 minutes to decide if we were going to do it as it was imminent that we get him there as quickly as possible. Dr Sisler seems like a caring person, however $8,000 into this and that doesn’t even include his follow up care and eye drops. Caring doesn’t seem to cut it. After the surgery we have not heard from him…thought he might have some interest in how well his surgery performed. My husband and I feel completely taken advantage of. I think anyone considering this surgery should consider carefully. I would ask the vet to see his record of success. That is something we did not do…we just went with it after he said there was such a high percentage success rate. Another thing that is a little disconcerting about this is he corrected two cataracts (more $) but what good is it if my dog CANNOT see! Proceed with caution.”

I get so angry when I think about what we had to go through and the fact that Sisler just up and left. I truly do not know how he sleeps at night. He was so flippant with me when the surgery did not work.

When we read her review, we were impressed that Lisa felt the same way about saving her dog’s only remaining eye just as we did about Peanut’s. We also knew that Sisler had performed surgery on both our dogs within the same month…perhaps even the same week. So we reached out to her and offered our email address. We were hoping to learn more about her experience since we felt so isolated having been abandoned by the Eye Care for Animals team.

In a follow up email, Lisa told us something that really solidified our plans to create this website. “I just learned that our [local veterinary] ophthalmologist has just sent another dog up to see Sisler.  Honestly, I looked at her a little dumbfounded and asked her to please give anyone my number so that I could share my experience.”