It was a dark rainy afternoon as I drove past the Wake Tech campus, I started to change lanes, noticed a car approaching at high speed, and tried to go back to the right lane. My last thought as I tried to keep the JEEP on the road was, “These things are really heavy.” When I woke up with my head hanging out the broken window, I noticed a crowd standing around the car. My first thought was, “Good. They will help me get back on the road so I can drive home”. Then someone threw a blanket over my head, the roof was ripped off, and I was removed with the jaws of life.
They put me on a hard slab and tied me down, I couldn’t move and would stay in that for the next 8 hours until they got the radiologist’s report. A police officer came to talk to me, said I was called in as a fatality, and gave me a ticket. The report came, and I was discharged with a clean bill of health. I was given a script for pain meds, which I never filled, and did a little jig out the door.
I didn’t want my neck to stiffen up, so I stretched it in all directions. 7 days later, I went to my chiropractor, thinking an adjustment would be in order. He was happy that I had stretched and had not been given a neck brace and said they make things worse. He took the X-rays from the hospital and went to look at them. He returned with a small foam neck collar and said, “Stop doing that; put this on; you are going to the hospital; you have a broken neck.”
I was seen by a neurosurgeon who prescribed a very stiff, ungiving neckbrace, which I was to wear 24/7 for the next four months. I wore it to bed and in the shower, only allowing a minute to change the foam lining.
I was scared and uncomfortable, but I was going to be OK.
My chiropractor showed a colleague the X-rays and asked him to find what someone had missed. The guy looked and looked and said he couldn’t find anything. “What do you mean you couldn’t find anything?” “You said to find what someone missed. No one could have missed that huge chunk out of the second vertebrae.”
Hmmm…. I thought about how someone could have missed it. All that came to mind was that Dr X could have been drinking or doing drugs. I was going to be OK. I was not dead I was not a quadriplegic, but I worried that if this were the case the next person might not do so well.
The letter stated: Dear Dr X, First, I want you to know that I am OK; second, I have no intention to sue. However, we have to talk.
I got a letter from the head of his practice stating that he was board-certified. That was nice, but we had to talk. He said he was going on vacation, and would get back to me when he returned. He didn’t. In the meantime I I went to Scotland with my neck in an unforgiving trap. It was so cold there that some days I was glad I had it.
I returned to North Carolina and started my quest. I was clearly being blocked by the head of Dr X’s practice . I decided to go to the next level. I took off the proverbial gloves
Dear Dr. X: We still need to talk. You have a choice: Either we talk, or the next letter will be to your licensing board. It’s your choice. I got a call from him. He said he wanted to talk to me four months ago, but his partners wouldn’t let him. It’s good to say, but I would hold judgment to see if it was true or not
Dr. X came to my house right on time. I didn’t tell him, but we met in my office. I was in my shrink’s chair, and he was on the patient’s couch. I didn’t think it would help to say that. He started, “We speak our notes into a recorder, and sometimes the transcriber puts them on the wrong x-ray (!) I was really hoping this was the case. But it was the way I talk, it was clearly me.” He looked at me and said, “I don’t know how it happened”. He could have left then, I got what I needed.
12-step programs have a saying, “How do you know when an alcoholic or drug addict is lying? Their lips are moving”. If he had a problem so bad that he went to work impaired, he would not have said that. He would have made uo a lie to make himself look good, or at least better. I felt comfortable that future patients would be as safe as possible given that mistakes can happen with anyone.
It may be hubris on my part, but I think having this time with the patient who should have died or been paralyzed from the neck down was healing for him. I think I am correct for two reasons. The first is that while he had made it clear he had an engagement and could only stay 1/2 hour, he stayed two full hours.
We talked about a lot of things. We talked about hospital policy and what should be changed, we talked about how I could have had a better ER experience and what I could have done. We talked about my accident and his mistake. We talked and talked until there was nothing else.
He got up to leave and walked past where I was sitting. He stopped, turned, and went to sit back down.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this.” This guy had me at ‘It was me, and I don’t know how.’ “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but they didn’t want me to come alone. (I knew that) They wanted me to bring a lawyer or at least one of the partners.” He looked at me and said, ” But I didn’t think it would be the right thing to do”
Dr X was probably always a good doctor and probably better after this incident. He was clearly a very decent man. He made a terrible mistake that could have destroyed both of our lives but didn’t.
A June 1, 2015, New York Times article states that doctors who practice defensive medicine are much more likely to be sued. I have seen articles and studies like this since the 1980s. However, people like Dr X’s partners continue to try to keep patients at length and never, ever admit to any kind of error. What a mistake
I’ve been told that getting a doctor who has malpractice against you is hard. Well, it’s not all that easy, but with perseverance and some knowledge of the system, it’s clearly doable. Not all doctors are like Dr. X, clearly.
But what if this happened more? Instead of everyone circling the wagons, what if doctors and patients just talked? Maybe medicine, in general, would actually get better. It certainly would be more human.
It doesn’t always work out this way, but there are other ways that we can affect medicine. I will share part 2 of this story in my next post. If you sign up for notifications, you won’t miss this one.