Tina Cassar Medical Fund

Dr Tina Cassar has become known throughout the Bluegrass over the past 20 years not only for her excellent equine veterinary skills, but her limitless compassion for animals and their owners. The tougher the case, the more tenacious Tina is, with positive outcomes more often than not. Ironically, Tina has had to turn that determination and drive inwards the past 4 months, especially this past week. As of right now, both Tina and her newborn son are in intensive care, in separate hospitals.

Tina and her partner, Scott Snider, were expecting their first child together, due late March 2024. Halfway through the pregnancy, they learned that their son had a congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH). This meant he would be born with severely underdeveloped lungs. He would need intensive care immediately after birth and would need several surgeries.

As is Tina’s style, she wanted to do the utmost possible in the situation, which meant undergoing surgery on her baby in utero while she was only 27 weeks pregnant. In late December, Tina had the surgery and has been in Cincinnati Children’s Hospital since then. Tina faced complications in the past month, culminating in an emergency C-section on February 25 at 36 weeks. Baby John was born at 4 pounds 3 ounces. He was immediately placed on life-support consisting of a heart-lung by-pass machine and underwent his first surgery to repair his CDH at two days of age. He suffered a brain bleed and had additional abnormalities identified that may have a lifelong impact. Baby John is still critical but stable and is facing months of life-support in intensive care and many more medical/surgical procedures during his childhood.

As heartbreaking as the situation with Baby John is, the family has been dealt another blow with Tina developing acute heart failure herself hours after Baby John was out of surgery. The cause of the heart failure and Tina’s long-term prognosis is still undetermined. Tina has been in the University of Cincinnati Cardiac ICU for the past 5 days. Once she is stable enough, further diagnostics will be performed.

Medical costs, as well as Tina’s inability to work for an unknown extended time period, are daunting. It is our hope we can show Tina the same level of compassion and care that she has shown all of us for the past two decades.