Three Days In Dallas | 1
Sep 4, 2018
All physicians are taught, “First do no harm.” But what happens when a doctor does harm his patients?
Dr. Robert Henderson was a veteran spinal surgeon in Dallas when he got an unusual phone call from a local hospital: a new surgeon had operated so poorly that a patient who’d walked in on her own two feet now couldn’t even wiggle her toes. Dr. Henderson had seen a lot, but he wasn't prepared for this. The surgery was so bad, in fact, he asked himself whether this person possibly be an impostor impersonating a physician?
“Death Don’t Have No Mercy” performed by Delaney Davidson and Marlon Williams, courtesy of Rough Diamond Records.
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a listener note this story contains adult content and language
► 00:00:10imagine that you're struggling with back pain for months maybe years
► 00:00:16no one can tell you what's wrong you live with the pain day after day you feel like your life is out of control and you can't find a way to take it back then you find a doctor it's a miracle is all I've got to say about it doctor doesn't change the one great man he is the best doctor I think that anybody could ever go to you trust him any if you're having the problems that I had you know give him a call
► 00:00:47because he'll fiction
► 00:00:51we're at our most vulnerable when we go to our doctors we place our trust in the person at the other end of that scalpel we trust the hospital we trust the system don't forget more information on any of the outstanding doctors you see on today's show you head to the website and that would be Candice that doc network.com that's the place that is the place to go now the place to go is our patients seem to sing the Praises of dr. Christopher dunch
► 00:01:18he had glowing reviews on health grades and on his Facebook page he claimed to be the best spinal surgeon in the state of Texas he could fix you
► 00:01:28so you go ahead with the surgery okay we're going to count backwards from ten now please
► 00:01:42when you wake up you're an awful pain and you can tell the faces around you or summer you think God what did he do to me it turns out there was another story about dr. Dench the one you didn't see couldn't see you don't know this yet but you will never walk again and you
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► 00:03:18from one durian Laura Beal and this is dr. death
► 00:03:30this is episode 1 three days in Dallas
► 00:03:35I've lived and worked in Dallas for more than 20 years as a medical journalist although now I write mostly for National magazines I used to work for the Dallas Morning News I've been in and out of a fair share of the hospitals here we've got a lot of them Dallas Medical Center sits just outside the northern edge of town it's a community hospital and uninspired Brown building just a few stories tall it's been around under one name or another for decades
► 00:04:06and it's one of several hospitals in the area where dr. Robert Henderson has worked during his 40 year career he's a trim man balding with a short grey beard on July 26th 2012 dr. Henderson was at home when he got a phone call from the administrator of Dallas Medical Center and I was called the afternoon right around two o'clock they had a patient who had just been through surgery and she was not doing well
► 00:04:35so I was over at that other Hospital probably within 90 minutes
► 00:04:43dr. Henderson is highly respected in the Dallas Medical Community he truly loves being a surgeon well I wanted to be a physician since I was 7 years old then a medical school he quickly realized that he liked fixing people's problems just like that seeing patients diagnosed appropriately seeing patients receiving the proper surgical procedure and then just observing and basking in the pride of having
► 00:05:13reverse their disease in many cases stopping their pain and actually curing problems and that's what I liked and had you gotten a call before this to come in and correct procedure from a previous surgeon I have over the years that's occurred multiple times but usually it's initiated by the surgeon themselves I mean every surgeon has the potential to get into a situation you can't handle
► 00:05:43it's either it's outside the scope of his specialty or you just discover something that wasn't there recognized on the preoperative Diagnostics and needs to be taken care of or an accident occurs for most of his career dr. Henderson has focused exclusively on the back he's even helped develop some of the surgical techniques common to spine surgeries today it wasn't unusual for him to get asked to help with a complicated spinal case but this
► 00:06:14this call was different but I had never been called in by the administration to take over the care of a patient
► 00:06:23when Henderson got to Dallas Medical Center the administrator started filling him in the patient was a woman named Mary eafford she'd come in for surgery on her own two feet but after a long day in the operating room she'd been left in agony now she could barely move her legs or wiggle your toes the administrator also told Henderson the name of Mary eafford surgeon I had heard don't use name previously through kind of the Grapevine
► 00:06:53dr. Christopher dunch what he'd heard wasn't good but it was just talk murmurs and Doctors Lounge has he hadn't paid that much attention well I'm putting it together with what I'd heard on the Grapevine and of course now I have a deep level of concern in some verification of what I'd heard but dr. Henderson was also aware he was hearing from someone who might not understand all the nuances of spinal surgery and now I really
► 00:07:23when I look at the Diagnostics look at all the Imaging that has been done since her operation Henderson studied the x-rays and the notes dr. Dunn's had written step-by-step before the surgery how he was going to go about it his plan was correct except there was a problem the procedure that he intended to do was not the procedure that he did perform
► 00:07:50so what's going through your mind when you're looking at the x-rays and his operative notes and you're reading all of this what are you thinking well I'm really thinking that that some kind of travesty occurred here because he hasn't done virtually anything that he intended to do or that he described in the operation but the ailing Berry eafford wasn't even the whole story from that day at Dallas Medical Center dr. Henderson also learned about another woman
► 00:08:20dr. Doug had operated on just the day before who was also in serious condition so serious in fact that she'd been taken into intensive care just as Dench was scheduled to begin operating on Mary eafford he's doing it what one of these patients these operated on the previous day is dying in needs expert care and he's the only neurosurgeon there and he totally
► 00:08:50abandons her
► 00:08:52The Other Woman the one who was already an intensive care was named floella Brown
► 00:08:59floella was 64 years old she and her husband Joe had met and fallen in love in high school Joe had retired and floella was getting ready to retire to should had neck surgery once before a few years back the doctors had installed titanium plates but now her neck and left shoulder were hurting she wanted to be pain-free before she and Jo moved to a house on Lake Texoma dr. Dench was
► 00:09:29to remove a disc from her spine and attached Hardware to fasten two vertebra together he began the surgery early on the morning of July 24th 2012 a Tuesday
► 00:09:47most people in the room assume that everything was going smoothly for the first 20 or 30 minutes then dr. Dunn started to complain that he was having trouble seeing her spine as you were saying there's so much but I can't see Kyle Kissinger was one of the nurses in the operating room that morning had worked with dr. dunch the day before and was already starting to wonder how good a surgeon he was
► 00:10:15so he was using one of the scrub text from our hospital and so he just keeps telling her suck more suck more get that blood out there I can't see there was a lot of blood way more than there should have been it was seeping through the blue draping around Flawless body and dripping onto the floor there was a bucket on the floor for use sponges usually when they're tossed into the bucket there splotchy or slightly pink but not this time
► 00:10:44I was getting back dark red sponges the sponges were soaked through with blood
► 00:10:51the surgery lasted a long time way longer than it should have when it was done floella had lost a lot of blood
► 00:11:02in the recovery room though she said she felt okay she asked for ice that evening Joe came to visit with their son and granddaughter Joe was worried something about his wife didn't seem right he would later describe her as fidgety when he came back at around 5:30 the next morning her condition had deteriorated
► 00:11:28so well as body was convulsing Joe - to the front desk and told the nurses she needed help
► 00:11:36a half-hour later floella Brown Lost Consciousness when Kyle Kissinger arrived for work another nurse told me hey you know did you hear what's going on with your patient from yesterday Kissinger asked if dr. dunch had been to see her I'm like they'll have you called him or you know that she just says we're unable to get a hold of them so which is concerning in fact dr. dunch was nowhere to be found he was due
► 00:12:05perform another surgery that morning the one on Mary eafford the operation was supposed to start at 7 a.m. but seven came and went finally around 7:45 he arrived at the hospital when he got there Kissinger told him about what was going on with floella brown doctor dentist looked disheveled he had two days of stubble he had pinpoint pupils and hardly seemed to Blink Kissinger turn to the surgical
► 00:12:35thick so I turned it down I said I mean am I wrong or is that guy on something and there was something else don't had a hole about the size of a nickel in the back of his scrubs there's on the butt cheek of her scrubs and he didn't wear underwear so like that's why I really like you know shined out to me it stood out to him because he'd seen that same hole twice before that hole I saw Monday Tuesday Wednesday
► 00:13:06It could only mean one thing dr. dunch hadn't changed his scrubs in three days Kissinger couldn't believe it that's kind of concerning given the fact that Ortho and spine surgeons are very very much sticklers when it comes to a sterility what does last patient in the ICU no one would have been surprised if dr. Dunn's decided to delay the Mary eafford surgery and tend to floella but instead he began the operation
► 00:13:46when dr. Henderson arrived at the hospital he would call the operation that dr. Dunn's had performed on Mary eafford an unmitigated atrocity so what happened well from the start done she seemed distracted about an hour into the surgery he turned to nurse Kyle Kissinger he told him he wanted to do a craniotomy on floella Brown the patient lying in the ICU a craniotomy would essentially cut a hole
► 00:14:16skull to relieve the pressure in her brain Kissinger told him that wasn't possible that this Hospital wasn't authorized for craniotomies that it didn't even have the proper equipment for them don't reminded him who was in charge basically his reaction was your nurse I'm a doctor I know what I'm doing I can do it with whatever you have on hand and just just get it scheduled
► 00:14:47you know nurses are supposed to follow doctor's orders unless it's something that is clearly putting a patient at risk or you know it's your job to question at that point and so that was why I was questioning at that point I said that there's no way we're going to be able to do it Dench told Kissinger to go find his boss he did and return to the operating room with two of his supervisors they also told Dench pretty emphatically the answer was still no at that
► 00:15:17Point that's when he broke scrub to go get gas make arrangements for her movement
► 00:15:23dense left the room with Mary eafford spine Exposed on the table that really does not occur ever any kind of surgery is you want to have the patient open as little time as possible one more minute out of the room is another minute on anesthesia so while Dent was out of the room the rest of the surgical team searched for a screw that they were having trouble locating inside Mary Eve
► 00:15:53body the screw was supposed to go into the Bony part of the spine but they could see from the x-rays that it had not it was somewhere they couldn't tell where exactly in the muscle of her back all those are going that screw is not even in bone right now it is sitting in soft tissue it's sitting in muscle somewhere it's not it never went into bone that's returned about 15 minutes later he insisted the screw
► 00:16:23who was right where it was supposed to be it was almost as if he's telling us the X-ray is wrong
► 00:16:30he's saying I that's where I have it is sitting in bone and we were like how can this x-ray be lying it's a picture it's not like a computer program that's creating some some digital map for you it is just a picture you know it is real time here is the X-ray tech watched in stunned disbelief normally during a surgery like this she might take five or six images this time she took almost 20
► 00:16:59T because she didn't like what she was seeing finally when she saw that a part of the hardware called the cage was off to one side she spoke up I don't think the cage is in the right area done snarled back at her I've done a fucking visual I can see where it is you don't have to tell me
► 00:17:20but it was obvious that it wasn't going well he kept putting in one of the screws and taking it out again drilling removing drilling removing over and over
► 00:17:37toward the end of the operation then she inserted a screw in to marry Eva words tailbone he did it so awkwardly no one in the room had ever seen anything quite like it then done just threw up his hands jubilantly and said
► 00:17:52I can leave her just like that she'll be fine
► 00:17:57the surgery was over
► 00:18:00the day after her surgery and administrator at the hospital sent an email to dr. dunch it said how was your patient from yesterday doing I went on rounds this morning and she informed me that you may be taking her back to surgery on Monday is everything okay yes everything is fine surgery's on Tuesday
► 00:18:23but Mary eafford was far from fine she had lost almost a third of her blood volume during the operation she woke up from surgery in almost unbearable pain she had walked into the hospital on her own two feet now her legs were almost lifeless she couldn't turn over in her bed she couldn't raise her toes she wailed and sobbed and begged the nurses to give her something anything to stop the pain
► 00:18:53Kyle Kissinger went to see her do you usually go and see your patients okay now I've never I've never got to see a patient in their room after as a know our nurse he only sees patients before surgeries I was trying to be become as much friends' mm as I can because not only make them a little less stress but to let them know they can trust me because I'm going to be there while you're asleep and I'm going to make sure that nothing bad comes to you
► 00:19:23he knew she would need another operation and asked if he could be there it has to do with like the whole like feeling guilty like let her get hurt like under my you know under my supervision so I just I felt the responsibility that I wanted to be there to fix whatever I was there that went wrong and she was just in a lot of discomfort in a little bit disoriented from the sedation that she had
► 00:19:54this is when dr. Henderson first came to see her
► 00:19:58she wasn't mad or upset she was more confused and disappointed and depressed that she was just thankful that there's someone else taking care of me she said I don't ever want to see dr. dunch again
► 00:20:24dr. Henderson brought Mary eafford back onto the operating table the next day by now he'd decided that dunch was at the very least an incompetent surgeon may be worse
► 00:20:38when dr. Henderson clipped the freshly sewn incisions on Mary ephraim's back he saw for the first time what dr. Dunn chat done
► 00:20:49he turned on a video recorder okay here we are on Mary effort on 728
► 00:20:58I knew it was going to go to litigation of some sort for you know malpractice because of what I'd seen on the x-rays and when it seen on her physical exam so I thought it was just easier to just film it and dictate while I was filming it let me have another the first thing he saw was a screw just sticking up right through the middle of the spinal canal and just kind of flopping around and it's attached by a rod to the screw
► 00:21:27the level above on the right side well the screws salad but the rods not salad in fact I just pull on the rod and pulls right out this is the s-1 screw which is right adjacent went on he found more damage more Hardware where it shouldn't be there were three holes poked into the bones of her spinal column where dunch had tried and failed three times to insert screws once crew was jabbed directly into her spinal canal
► 00:21:57that same screw had also skewered a bundle of nerves that controls one leg in the bladder dr. Henderson removed fragments of bone in a clean that up and I'm looking for the nerve root and there is no nerve root and then I trace it back to the spinal sack itself and I see this fluid coming out of leak right there in the nerve Roots been amputated it's been removed it's been resected
► 00:22:28he remove the nerve root so he could put bone in this place where they're not supposed to be any bone the bundle of nerves that used to control her leg was completely gone that's why Mary eafford couldn't lift her foot anymore to perform this so poorly in so disastrously that you really haven't even accomplished anything except injuring the patient Henderson realized something else too
► 00:22:57Dunt hadn't even been operating in the right place all this damage and had been operating on the wrong disc the whole time probably everyone in the operating room that day all of the Personnel in the operating room that day could have done a better job in performing that surgery than dr. Dunn should done at this point dr. Henderson knew the surgery was completely botched he thought it
► 00:23:27as if the person doing the surgery knew what to do and then did every step exactly wrong
► 00:23:38and as he operated into the morning another more worrying suspicion began to crystallize in his mind I said anyone with a minimal amount of training would have hesitated to go forward with the next step when they realized that they were lost or could this possibly be an imposter
► 00:24:02impersonating a physician and a surgeon
► 00:24:07here was someone someone who claimed to be a doctor who in just two days had left one patient seriously injured and another fighting for her life
► 00:24:21even as dr. Henderson operated on Mary eafford floella Browns condition was deteriorating she had been transferred to another hospital but she never regained Consciousness dr. Dent had punctured and blocked the major artery in her neck with a misplaced screw soon no activity could be detected in her brain days later as her husband broke down in sobs she was withdrawn from life support
► 00:24:56by then dr. Henderson had decided he needed to do something about dr. dunch after all he says doctors are taught first Do no harm and you extend that a little bit further it's if you have the abilities to help someone
► 00:25:13then not helping them is persisting in the harm that there's suffering
► 00:25:20he's not like the type of guy who gets into other people's business you know he's a he's a pretty cool guy he's quiet he's just you know does his thing and he gets moves I mean I also it is kind of surprising for him to be getting in there and doing what he can
► 00:25:38to put it another way Robert Henderson is really not the kind of guy you would Peg to go on a crusade against another doctor but that's exactly what he was about to do he began looking into dentist background
► 00:25:54in the meantime though Dallas Medical Center administrators had seen enough to revoke doctor dentists hospital privileges he would no longer operate there but that's hardly the end of the story there was nothing to stop him from going on to another hospital and another and another you see stopping a doctor from operating all together can be time-consuming and messy it involves lawyers and cost money
► 00:26:24there's an easier way for hospitals to deal with a problem doctor just let him
► 00:26:32disappear
► 00:26:42there was one surgery doctor Dutch performed during the week he had privileges at Dallas Medical Center that hadn't gone as poorly as the other two the first meeting he was very personable he told me that if they didn't treat me right he would be right there to make sure that I got the proper treatment the patient's name was surely mock she was at home one day when a sharp crimp sees the back of her leg and didn't let go
► 00:27:13and I got down where I could not walk even to the bathroom for 21 days the pain wasn't going away her doctor gave her some pain medication but it didn't do any good eventually he recommended surgery he gave her the numbers for to back surgeons and I came home and called both of them and left my numbers and doctor dunch was the first doctor that car
► 00:27:42called me at the time she was 71 but still working as a school administrator her silver hair is teased into the same style she's worn since the 1960s Shirley and her husband Brandon met dr. dunch at his office well he seemed real nice and personable don't seemed nice he was a blue-eyed self-confident former football player with an impressive sounding resume
► 00:28:12from his background we trusted that he would do the right thing as a Doctrine Sergeant he said he was the best minimum evasive surgery in the southwest and so the I think in little wonderful I've got the right person unlike the surgeries on Mary eafford and floella brown everything seemed fine afterwards with Shirley's surgery she went home with less pain than she'd come
► 00:28:41and with but then a few months later she went to see him again for a follow-up appointment done to ordered some X-rays and did an examination
► 00:28:55when the x-rays came back she was shocked and I could see fragments of bi-metal out to the side and all these bone fragments and he said you've had a foul and I said no I have not had a phone and he said yes you've hit you've had a phone well he was very adamant and I was almost just adamant that I had not Fallen dr. Dunn's told her she would
► 00:29:24the second operation as soon as possible they said you can have to have emergency surgery I said how soon he said right away Dunst old Shirley and her husband that this surgery would be performed at a different hospital one on South Hampton Road in the poorer southern side of Dallas last said dr. Dutch why are they are they moving it from One hospital to another he said o Southampton Hospital
► 00:29:55has the most modern equipment for him to use
► 00:30:00when I learned it was on Hampton Road in South Dallas I nearly flipped out and we got over there he says now the hospital is not so fancy but the amenities that they have or not really all that but he says the people make up for it and and said you'll really get the best of care and when we got over there's a place should have been condemned 20 years sooner
► 00:30:32her surgery took 6 hours
► 00:30:36twice as long as the first one she needed a blood transfusion
► 00:30:43and when she woke up I thought I was going to meet my maker
► 00:30:50when Shirley was four years old she had taken a flying leap from the top of a Hayloft she limped around for weeks on a sprained ankle without ever going to a doctor she did go to a doctor for a cyst on her eyelid when she was in grade school and didn't even cry when he lands tit Shirley mock is tough as nails but this pain I cannot describe it I had never been to the screaming point in my life and that was the worst that I ever had
► 00:31:20my back was just absolutely killing me it was nothing at all like the surgery that I had over at the medical center hospital and I just was just oh and eigen E and I remember this male voice he says you're going to have to be quiet I said I can't help it I'm dying I had stood so much pain with all this problem that I had that I knew the difference I was
► 00:31:50just about to die I thought
► 00:31:53in the weeks that followed surely mock was prescribed painkillers to try and manage the pain but it wouldn't go away all the while dr. Henderson was asking questions he knew there was something very wrong with dr. Dutch but what it was a question that would lead to a terrifying conclusion for everyone you think you're too intelligent to let that happen to you but under the circumstances
► 00:32:23head no no way of knowing that this was the fraud
► 00:32:31I believed you he was so convincing when I started reporting this story I knew it was unlike anything I'd ever heard but some of the things that surprised me most weren't just about Christopher dunch
► 00:32:58this is a story about our Healthcare System a system we trust with our lives and if it couldn't save his patients how will it save us
► 00:33:11I mean who or what does it protect whoa it don't take no vacation on this season of dr. death he was smart he was brilliant he was a genius so she had a thing for him instantly yes I confronted him several times and what was his reaction he said do not get involved in his personal life get the can down the road protect
► 00:33:41so first and protect the doctor second and make it be somebody else's problem they make him out you like you're his doctor death you know what that is what he is he's become that but that's not the I don't know dr. death I know Chris dunch from wonder--i this is part 1 of 6 of dr. death an investigative miniseries about the system that failed to protect 33 patients in Dallas
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► 00:34:39you Doctor death was written reported and hosted by me Laura Beal sound design by Jeff Schmidt story consultant is Jonathan Hirsch associate producer is pelvic Usama Sue executive produced by George lavender Marshall Louis and Hernan Lopez for wondering