Leghorns don't seem to take restraining and surgery as easily as other breeds. When Coral was caponizing the leghorns they stressed much more then other breeds and had to be done one teste only then a couple of weeks rest then the next one. Even when the procedure went butter smooth.Dang it. I was so hoping she'd be ok :-( And I just adore Leghorns, too.
I think what happens sometimes is their organs start shutting down yet it takes several days for them to die of organ failure after that. We have no way of knowing if their organs have begun shutting down and there's nothing we could do about it if we knew anyway.
Their only chance is to do the surgery in the hopes it's not to late. It sucks we don't find out until after the fact if it was too late or not. And if she had other health issues going on it just gets to be too much for their tiny bodies.
There's a crop surgery thread on BYC and some of those women lost theirs also. I, thankfully, didn't read that thread til after I did my 1st or would've worried too much. Short of handling every single bird every single morning at wake-up I don't know how some of these crop issues can be noticed soon enough.
You've learned something that may save a very special bird later on down the road even if she doesn't make it.