25- Chasing Rabbits by Rodolfo Del Toro

I get discounted and free e-book lists daily. I never spend a lot of money, less than $5.00 per week. I was looking over the options this past Wednesday, like you do, when I saw this book. It is Chasing Rabbits by Rodolfo Del Toro and it is my favorite kind of medical non-fiction, a memoir.

And it was 99 cents.

I hit the buy now button and I was surprised that I already owned it. I was embarrassed when the site informed me that I had owned this book since February 2024.

I had never read it. School brain, you know. The book was part of my ginormous TBR pile that grows daily. But I can’t give up books entirely.

As medical memoirs go it is on the shorter side, only 220 pages. A quick read. I had time this weekend and so I decided to read it all in one go.

This story is in three parts. The beginning is what stands for present day, many years after the events of the 2nd part, and the third part picks the story back up from the first part. Rudy the doctor has an unexpectedly light afternoon before a three day weekend and his long-time secretary tells him he received an intriguing invitation from a butler.

This leads to the middle part of the book, which is the meatiest part of the book, and Rudy telling his secretary about this one rotation he had in his 4th year of medical school.

Cue the second part. The first part felt a little disjointed and rushed and I was prepared not to like the doctor. His secretary was great and is well written.

In the middle part, Rudy and his friend Mike are 4th year medical students and their planned clerkship for the last rotation of the year fell through. This was strongly hinted out because Mike’s family was rich and connected with an insurance company. This unexpected snafu was punishment for his father’s actions. I could see this but I wish that the book would have spend a little more time on this.

Because their real last rotation of the year was going to be together. In a children’s oncology ICU. With stable cast of characters, the doctor who oversees the unit, the fellow, a resident, and several nurses. And a pulmonology resident. All the nurses are named and have their own personalities. I love it when that happens. There is also Julia the supermodel who has been set up with Rudy by Mike.

There are three main children whose stories are centered in this section. Tim, the little boy with bone cancer, Megan, the little girl who has leukemia, and Maria, the ward of the state with a lost brother who has

Tim has had his lower leg amputated and a lump had been noted on his femur above his BKA. His parents were understandably concerned and he was in the hospital for a biopsy and treatment if necessary. He was waiting on biopsy results.

Megan is most concerned with being well enough for the trip to Disney land that was being planned for the children. When she is introduced, a nursing student has been assigned to restart her IV. Megan objects because the vein they want to use is unusable. Because she knows her body best she gives a tour of the most often used veins in the forearms. The nurse, not the nursing student, is successful in cannulating the vein that she indicates. This was one of my favorite passages. It is important that we give these kids who know they are sick, who know that it might not end the way everyone wants it to, agency over their body.

As Rudy and Mike leave the room, Dr. Betances is explaining to the nursing instructor that no nursing student will be starting this IV. His reasoning is that the kids have been through hell and do not need the pain from an unsuccessful needle stick. The nursing instructor just wants a body to have her students practice on and protests that the kids need new IVs so often it is a good practice place. I also liked this exchange. Dr. Betances standing up for his fragile patients. But I also disliked the nursing instructor who tantrumed off to tell on Dr. Betances. The nursing instructor does not come off looking good here.

Maria is in the isolation part of the ward because of her end-stage leukemia. She had a good attitude and a great smile. She also had a really good relationship with the main Dr. Betances. There is a back and forth about a business arrangement for having 1 medical student in her care, not 2. This was a great back and forth and you can really feel Maria here. The price of 2 medical students for the rotation is a 64 pack of crayons. As the group leaves to continue rounding, a nurse stays behind to talk to Maria.

In the next little bit, you learn about Billy, her foster brother, who was also at the farm where she was being fostered. But once the foster father died, she was sick and they were separated. He was adopted after that. Maria has been at the hospital for nearly a year. This is where it is explained that the staff takes care of all of Maria’s needs, including the non-medical ones. There are pink curtains, art supplies, and all the things to make a home for the dying little girl.

Rudy offers to talk to his friend the lawyer to search for Billy. This irritates Dr. Betances, like no one had bothered to look for Billy in the past 10 months.

The middle part is concerned with these children and their care. The nurses are caring and competent, the head doctor, Dr. Betances, is caring and giving, and the fellow teaches all that he can to the medical students.

I won’t write anymore about what life and death and bad news and good news happens in the second act. Or the third.

The best I can say is that I cried. And sometimes that is the best recommendation a book can have.

Part 2 more than made up for my perceived rushed feeling from part 1. I can understand after reading the second part, he just wanted to get into the meat of the story. I am a little less forgiving of the super model side plot, but even that has a good payoff and explanation.

You’re going to have to take my word for it.

I will read this again. I might even come to like the first part. But the second part is where the heart of the story is.

FFS Friday 9/19/25- Find Joy!

Man, I struggled with what to write today.

There’s just so much to swear about. Attacks on free speech, attacks on the free press, attacks on homeless people who a certain asshole of a fox anchor think need to be put to death, the smugness of certain individuals as they continue to survive the fall out.

I kind of feel like the Grandson in The Princess Bride as his Grandfather reads to him that Humperdinck survives. He is aghast and troubled about the continued existence of such a rotten antagonist. The one who has killed, and lied, and lied, and lied, and continues to survive. And survive and lie and kill.

Same, kid, same.

My advisor chair knows that I have been struggling with this nonstop shitshow. It is sapping my concentration. Concentration that I desperately need to finish my PhD program.

I have concentration but it is fragile. Because I feel like someone, anyone, needs to be documenting this shit show. Witnessing is a form of protest. Because those who go bump in the night would rather not be seen, thank you. It is very much go away, there is nothing to see here.

It is time to look past the shadows. It is time to find Joy. This will depend on the eye of the beholder. My joy is not the same as yours. Because we are different, you see.

Joy can be found in a baby’s laugh, or a perfectly made dinner just to make someone smile. It can be found in the soft fur of our beloved cat or dog. It can also be found in a movie that makes you laugh. This weekend I am determined to watch the Cornetto Trilogy by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost. Simply because I find joy in laughter.

The shitshow will go on. But there is joy in protesting for some.

Does the administration not realize that certain someones can seek out other platforms after they’ve been attacked and denigrated and next to fired by the administration’s yes men? If one platform is threatened, find another. The internet will be their playground. If anything they’ve been constrained and shackled to an industry that seeks to profit above all else. If the last five years has taught us anything there is gold in the internet.

Remember that someone has to pay witness to this continued insanity. Someone has to be able to explain to the next generation that most of society fucked it up and we lost the most precious prize of the last 249 years. Our freedom.

But find the joy in the everyday.

This will ease the pain of the witnessing.

It goes back to the thought experiment that was going around as I was growing up. If the tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? My answer was always yes. The tree doesn’t care if there is anyone to perceive it. Sound happens in the absence of someone to hear it. It is arrogant of us to consider the tree as an extension of our consciousness when it should be the other way around. The tree doesn’t care or need us but Democracy needs us to be able to bear witness when/if it falls. And to help if we can.

After all, in the Lord of the Rings when Théoden asked “Who was there “Where was Gondor when the gates of Westfall fell?” This really was a question of Théoden’s son, Theodred, falling in the battle and the grief that paralyzed a nation that followed.

Maybe I will watch the LOTR trilogy next weekend. Just to remind myself that this has happened before and good has triumphed over evil. We see you, Sauron, and we do not care for it.

Cookie Thursday 9/18/25- Jalapeño bacon crescent roll bites

This week continues the month theme of Cookies for Breakfast.

Of course, I am taking the definition of cookie with an extreme grain of salt. Like huge, the size of Gibraltar.

This is more classified as a make. As in it has breakfast type items in it. I would almost call them a biscuit but then that’s not correct, either.

It started when I say these packages of cooked jalapeño bacon at Aldi when I was grocery shopping. They were on steep discount but still within expiration date. I believe they were less than $1.50/each. So I bought 3, with this exact make in mind. Aldi also has a knock off of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, which were $1.29. I bought 3.

Not having to cook the bacon? Priceless. But the entire make cost me less than $9.00.

I became aware of this recipe through a video series called “Dead Greg’s Recipes”. A relative of the cook had died and had left their cousin a ziploc bag full of recipes. The cousin gave the cook the bag of recipes and said let’s try them. There’s a whole schtick where the cook has labeled each bag onto a spinny wheel and they spin the wheel and the pointer lands on a category.

Kind of fun.

I should’ve checked the fridge before beginning the recipe though. I had less than 1/4 c of maple syrup and I could not find the bottle I had bought to replace it. Oops. But this recipe didn’t exactly have measurements for the ingredients. Beside the bacon, it called for 1 pound of bacon. The rest of the recipe was Crescent Roll tube, maple syrup, and brown sugar. No details on any of them.

I persevered on.

You open the Crescent roll tube by peeling the paper to reveal the fault line. It’s supposed to open itself from that point. Guess what didn’t happen! I used a spoon along the fault line, as directed. I opened and spread out 2 on a parchment lined cookie sheet, pinching the perforations together. I layered in what maple syrup I had, and then the bacon, and then 3/4 c brown sugar. I topped the entire thing with another Crescent Roll tube.

The entire make baked at 350 degree Fahrenheit. Again, no time limit was given so I just baked until browned. This was about 15 minutes.

Interesting result. I cut the entire structure with a pizza cutter after it had cooled. I have thoughts. The result was not very structurally sound. I think it needs a bit more on the bottom layer.

Next time I will definitely have more maple syrup, probably 1/2 c for the size I made. I would also mix that with 1/4 softened butter because this is the bottom layer and I feel it needs to be more substantial. Next is the chopped up bacon. I would increase the brown sugar to 1 c, dependent on the size of the dough. I would also add a spice into the brown sugar. Of course I might feel that way because it is nearly fall and pumpkin spice is EVERYWHERE. I would brush the top with butter and maybe a bit of cinnamon sugar.

Not a bad make with the scant details of the recipe. But sometimes that is fun.

I will not kick this out of the cookie jar, I’ll just tweak it a bit.

Call Secrets of the OR- OR investigations

Once upon a time that really happened, the patient was not waking up the way they should. All the anesthesia gases were off, the reversal agent given at least 10 minutes, but they were not opening their eyes or making any effort to, you know, breathe. Time ticks by, first five minutes, and then 10, and then 15 minutes. The anesthesiologist has been called to the room.

While anesthesia is trying to wake the patient up, you drag the workstation on wheels to the patient’s bedside so you can be an active part of the extubation, but also able to read the chart looking for clues.

There are none.

Time for a group think.

You ask about family history that isn’t in the chart. You remember that there is an enzyme deficiency that delays the clearance of anesthesia. You remember because one of your med-surg patients had it and would call for a certain medication whenever she woke up from anesthesia. You remember her telling you that she had a liver problem in the beginning of this conversation. And not only did she have it but so did her youngest daughter. And the last time there was a very long delay in waking up from anesthesia on one of the cases you’ve worked, it was also an enzyme deficiency. The same one the med-surg patient had.

The anesthesiologist goes out to the surgical waiting room to ask about family history of slow wake ups. This was covered in the pre-op consultation at bedside but this is a check in that what the patient and family said pre-op is correct. This is where they remember that grandfather would talk about the time that it took so long for him to wake up after surgery that when he finally did it was the next day and he was in ICU. But no one else has had a long wake-up. Not that many of them had ever had surgery other than babies.

There is such an enzyme deficiency that causes this. It is called pseudocholinesterase deficiency. This is an enzyme that breaks down anesthetic medications, such as succinylcholine. This is the medication that is often used to paralyze the patient prior to intubation.

Unknown to any of us, and the patient, and the family, this patient had a pseudocholinesterase deficiency. Their liver wasn’t metabolizing the paralytic, which kept them unable to breath on their own.

This is a quandary. There are two paths. The first is to keep the patient intubated in the operating room until enough time has passed to allow them to breath on their own. This is costly as an OR minute is expensive and who knows how long it will take before the patient wakes up. And also it effectively ties up the anesthesia team and leaves OB especially vulnerable in case there is a stat section. The second path is to keep the patient intubated, call for a ventilator to be brought to the PACU, and admit them to the ICU. Not long, just long enough for them to start breathing on their own. This can be anywhere from 2 hours to 12 hours.

The decision is made to move the patient to PACU and the waiting ventilator. If they are not extubatable at 2 hours, then PACU would move the patient to the ICU. Because call back time for the PACU nurse is expensive.

The first thing to do as the OR call nurse is to check the hospital census. This is a picture of what rooms are available. The second thing is to call the supervisor and tell them about the situation and the steps that might need to happen going forward. They promise to save an ICU bed.

The patient is moved to PACU, and attached to the ventilator and the monitors.

The waiting begins.

After the patient is settled in PACU, on a ventilator, you call the surgeon, who has been long gone, to tell them of the situation. Regardless of the working theory it is pseudocholinesterase deficiency, the surgeon still needs to be informed of what is going on. You tell the surgeon of the plan to wait in PACU for 2 hours and then the admission to the ICU if the patient is not yet awake.

You check in the PACU nurses and tell them that you’ve called the surgeon and gotten them up to speed on the situation. If there is nothing else, you will be heading home because OR call back time is expensive and being in the PACU when there are 2 recovery room nurses is expensive.

You remind them that the nursing supervisor is aware, there is a bed being held and the surgeon is aware. They run through the plan again with you of 2 hours intubated in the PACU and then, if not awake enough to extubate, admission to the ICU. They tell you to go home.

On your way out of the PACU you pass the anesthesiologist who is writing a letter to the patient advising them to be tested for pseudocholinesterase deficiency and advising them of the importance of having the family tested to. Because this is a genetic deficiency and is passed down. Like the patient’s grandfather likely passed it down to the rest of the family.

Luckily there is a test for that.

You tell the anesthesiologist that the PACU nurses know the plan and ask if they’ve spoken to the family again. If they have, you are going home.

The anesthesiologist assures you that the family has been spoken to and are waiting to see which path is to be taken.

You head home.

In a rare follow-up, you learn that the patient was able to breath in the PACU after an hour. They were extubated and sent home with family. The entire family was aware that they had to be tested or tell the next hospital and operating room they found themselves at.

This was the best case scenario. If the patient hadn’t been a young, health individual with a possible family history of pseudocholinesterase deficiency, more steps would have been taken in case it was something else. A head CT would have been the next stop to check for a stroke, and labs would have been drawn.

But not this patient. They were able to be extubated and go home with their family. With a heck of a story to tell and homework to do.

Tuesday Top of Mind 9/16/25- Thank you, Governor Stein, for not kotowing to the CDC

Did you get your covid booster shot in May like I told you? You know after RFK Jr. started his bs at the department? When the department first announced that boosters were only for those 65 years and older or those with preconditions but had not yet enacted it?

My husband immediately got an appointment and the booster. I immediately got an appointment and the booster. We both got boosters on May 21 of this year.

Do I remember exactly what spooked me about this entire situation? Apparently the FDA came out on May 20 with an article that I saw in Stat News.

The shenanigans are afoot again. Always, forever…

Now that the CDC has approved the new booster shot for the flu/covid season 2025 there is a discrepancy of which states will give you a vaccine/booster without a prescription. Or even with a prescription.

It is a hot icky mess.

Just as was designed by HHS.

Some states have come out as needing a prescription. If the pharmacy even has it.

Some states have not.

Nine states require individual prescriptions for a vaccine. At least at the writing of my source article from PBS dated September 12, 2025. In the four days since this article was written 3 other states have issued orders to make the covid vaccine available to their citizens. These are Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina. Hence the reason I am thanking Josh Stein in the post title.

To look on the bright side 41 do not. Soon to be 44. Six states that still require a prescription for even those eligible for the vaccine are Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Oregon, Utah, and West Virginia, plus D.C.

That’s even if the pharmacies are stocking the vaccine.

Rather a game of three card monte. Here a vaccine for the prescribed, there a vaccine for anyone who meets the threshold. Everywhere a vaccine. Confusing right?

Trust me, that is the entire fucking point. It’s as if the CDC wants to make it so confusing that people will throw up their hands and give up.

Too bad, CDC and HHS, those of us who’ve lived and survived since March 2020 know better. We know that this virus is a killer. We know that this virus disables through Long Covid. And we do not wish that on our worst enemy.

We are tired of the dead and the double speak and the ghoul in charge of it all.

My cat won’t let me write today

I know this is supposed to be a School Me Saturday post but I can’t write today.

Dot forbids it.

Dot is well known to my classmates and people I meet with on the regular from the hospital.

She’s quite popular. In fact, one of the monthly meetings has turned into an on the road meeting. Where we go to all the different hospitals and have the meeting with the different people from the hospital and the rest of the meeting attendees on Teams.

The same group of people that she mooned during a meeting two months ago when I was leading the meeting. She has no zoom chill.

Someone suggested that I have her be a traveling kitty.

She says no.

Cookie Thursday 9/11/25- Cornflake cookies

Cookies for Breakfast month continues.

And what screams breakfast more than cornflakes? I’ll wait while you rack your brain.

The idea of cereal was developed in 1863 by a man named Dr. James Caleb Jackson. Kind of. He made up a boring, very boring, meal type substance made of water and graham flour. The resulting make was so hard it had to be softened in milk to be edible. This, I believe, is technically graham flakes. Or granula, as it was called.

He believed that the root of all human ills was the digestive track. He’s not right and he’s not wrong.

Another physician who had visited Jackson’s sanitorium by the name of John Harvey Kellogg of Kellogg’s fame. You know, the cereal company.

Oddly Kellogg believed that the source of all human ills was a TWO pronged problem. The first was digestion, hence the cereal foods, but the other was masturbation. By having bland breakfast foods, unlike the meat and potatoes that got many a farmer through their long day, this might cool the self pleasure fever and also help people poop.

Kellogg and his brother Will developed cornflakes after he copied Dr. Jackson’s cereal creation and got caught. After a lawsuit from Jackson Kellogg renamed it granola. You may be more familiar with that name.

There was a man who earned his way at the sanitorium by working in the kitchen. His is also a familiar name, C.W. Post. He went on to invent an even more boring cereal that he called grape-nuts.

Confession time: I enjoy grape-nuts. After it has soaked in milk for a time.

The early days of history were wild. Read all about it in the Guardian article “The weird but true history of cereal- from anti-sex campaigns to mind control”.

In the before times of the dawn of cereal, there was no sugar in the cereal. It was very bland. Nothing like the brightly colored, highly sugared cereals of today. With their mascots and free prizes in the box. Do they even still do that?

This week’s make is a cornflake cookie. Simple ingredients beget a simple cookie.

The result was a surprisingly chewy, dense, slightly sweet cookie that crisped up wonderfully in the oven. With the occasional sharp crunch of the cornflake.

I would not through this cookie out of the cookie jar.

It took all that I had in me not to zhuhz it up. Look up the spelling yourself, there isn’t a lot of consensus on it. I itched to add another flavoring to the cookie. Anything would have done; all-spice, cinnamon, even cardamon.

But I resister and the cookie stands at it is. Slightly boring, good mouthfeel, kind of addicting cookie. I can have more than one; they’re healthy!

Call Secrets of the OR 9/10/25- We all need a hand every now and again

Sometimes the middle of the night surgical case is because it truly can’t wait the handful of hours before day shift. In the OR world we call that a life or limb emergency and it trumps everything, including power outages.

The thing is that most of these life or limb cases require more hands than the anesthesia team, scrub tech, surgeon, and circulator. I’ve already talked about calling in the PACU nurses for that extra set of hands, but what do you do while you are waiting for them to show? It’s not like you can tell the patient and the surgeon to chill out while you get more help.

The first thing you do is call the nursing supervisor and ask for any nurse or CNA that is free to come help. This is a move that is highly irregular and you will hear about it in the daytime from your manager. But remind them that the patient on the table who is actively trying to die but not actively enough to call the code button.

Another option is to call and wake up the manager and put them to the task of finding you a second set of hands. Once upon a time I lived less than a block from the hospital and they all knew it. I was as open then as I am now about pitching in and lending a hand when needed. One night the phone rang and it was L&D. There was a mother in full arrest and they were running the code blue but they needed to get the baby out pronto. Of course I threw some clothes on and ran down the street. They were doing chest compressions as I entered the OR to prepare for the section. The mom and the baby both lived. Apgar 6 and 8 for the kid.

But what do you do when you have the person who is pitching in? You give them an abbreviated version of the nursing student in the OR talk.

Don’t touch anything blue
If you do, just tell me and we can make it right
If you feel faint sit down, don’t even try to make it out of the room because you will not be able to

With a few questions you can ascertain their comfort level with basic nursing care and you can assign them. Anesthesia probably needs a second set of hands too. Get them to assist anesthesia. There will probably be STAT blood tests to order and vials to run to the lab. There may also be the need to hang stat blood and that is another thing they can do. This will free you the circulator from having to serve two masters and you can focus on the operative field.

One night there was a patient with belly bleed and we had suddenly gone through an entire basin full of laps when the surgeon asked for a blood loss estimate. This was when I had the PACU nurse who had arrived by then pulling the bloody sponges out of the basin and weighing them and putting them into the counter. A quick and dirty blood loss estimate is the weight of the sponge minus 20 grams because that is how much the sponge weighs. And a cc of blood roughly is a gram. For instance, it the bloody sponge weighs 55 grams minus 20 grams for the sponge equals 35 grams equals 35 cc of blood for that sponge. It isn’t wholly accurate and off by a couple of ccs give or take but it is a good ballpark figure to give the surgeon.

Remember your extra person doesn’t know what you know, and doesn’t know where anything is in the OR. This is where you curse that the Vulcan Mind Meld isn’t real and you can’t just download the information to their brain. But they do know how to make phone calls and put labs in. There are things that are too complicated for them to do like count instrument if you have to open another tray. Also they should not write on the count board. Only one person, you, should do that to decrease the chance of a miscount.

You can also show the extra set of hands how to open a package sterilely. Start them with something easy like a pack of sponges and show them how to hold the package in your hand and open the inner package like a present while it is resting on your palm with you thumb stabilizing it. If this is delegated be sure to keep an eye on them as they open sponges.

Someone needs to keep the family in the loop while also managing their expectation. This phone call is best from you as you know what to say. If you are too busy, ask the surgeon what message to give the family and the extra set of hands can relay it to the family word for word.

The patient is most likely going to a higher level of care floor in the hospital or even to a higher level of care hospital. Making those phone calls is something that the extra set of hands can absolutely do.

Congratulations, you and the extra set of hands saved the patient’s life. Tuck the patient in to whatever unit they end up on, or help the nursing supervisor send them to a higher level of care hospital. Now go write a wow card for them or a glowing email to their boss. After you’ve finished your charting.

Tuesday Top of Mind 9/9/25- Falsely blaming the mothers. Of course…

I really want to write a sarcastic, tongue in cheek post about this absolute buffoon that is running the HHS. But I don’t want to give him any credit.

Or have my words be misconstrued.

To be absolutely clear, Tylenol/Acetaminophen/Paracetamol/Panadol does NOT cause autism.

To be absolutely clear, folic acid/folate/vitamin B-9 does NOT cause autism.

RFK Jr., under the pressure of having something to give the ravening MAHA people the cause of autism that he promised by September, laid out that stinking turd of an answer. I can only surmise that it came from his nether regions.

He claims that the mother taking Tylenol during pregnancy or folic acid during pregnancy is the cause of autism.

Moron.

Tylenol is one of the only safe pain medicine to be taken during pregnancy. Ibuprofen with its increased risk of miscarriage because of bleeding and aspirin (other than low dose of 150 mg) can cause bleeding and can affect the fetus’ circulation.

And folic acid prevents neural tube defects. What is a neural tube defect? Spina bifida. This is a hole in the spine, sometimes all the way through the skin and is potentially devastating for a fetus. It leads to paralysis. Folic acid also helps your body make new cells. Like a growing fetus.

I think this is a case of a not science minded person who has been given the keys to our scientific institutions by a different moron and not being able to comprehend or understand or read scientific literature. He misconstrues what he does read because he doesn’t understand it. He cherry picks what he thinks is the truth from the scientific knowledge that ChatGPT compiles for him and wildly gets it wrong. Or the AI hallucinates; it could really go either way.

It is the very definition of a Cliff Notes Secretaryship. He only reads the title of the pages and guesses what the scientific paper is about. He uses these wildly incorrect guesses to make policy.

See also the new covid vaccination rules.

This man is dangerous for the health of the country.

Thankfully, the “news” that Tylenol and folic acid is the cause of autism has landed with a giant thud. I have seen many testimonials from the mothers of autistic children who did not take Tylenol in pregnancy.

To me, this harkens back to blame the mother.

They really don’t like women in this administration, do they? Especially women who know their worth and are fighting against being thought a second class citizen. Because a man said it we are to take it as gospel. Even if the man doesn’t know anything. Especially if the man doesn’t know anything.

I don’t think so.

Medical non-fiction podcast review 9/7/25- Dr. Death Season 1- Dr. Duntsch

I would be remiss if I didn’t review the medical non-fiction podcasts as well. There are some really well made ones out there. My favorites are from the Wondery studio.

This was a podcast that was recommended to me in 2020 by a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) as something I might be interested in. The first season that I am going to talk about was released August 2018 and ran through October 2018.

I listened to the first season avidly, aghast that an MD would be so negligent. But then I never thought of it again. Why? There was a little pandemic that also happened in 2020. Does covid-19 ring a bell?

Not to mention I graduated with my MSN in May of 2020. I used to listen to the recast episodes on my way to teach in January and February before the world shut down in March. And then I got a little busy. And then I went back to school in Fall 2022 and moved on to listening to other medical podcasts on my trips to the university.

Dr. Death is a story about the arrogance and

Dr. Death is about an orthopedic spine surgeon who left a trail of broken backs, death, and broken dreams behind him. He graduated from the University of Tennessee and did his training at the Tennessee Health Science Center. He only completed 100 surgeries out of the 1000 surgeries in a standard neurosurgery residency. He was hired by Baylor Regional Medial Center in Plano, Texas where he began to leave broken bodies behind.

He is the epitome of fail up. He would be invited to leave by a hospital and would leave for another hospital and damage patients and be invited to leave the second hospital. Rinse, repeat. Death and paralysis trailed in his wake.

No one had the presence of mind to stop his slow moving rampage until two surgeons who were called to repair the damage that Dr. Duntsch had wrought compared notes. They were determined to have charges filed against him. The filing of charges against another doctor is not a done thing. It is easier to have them resign and not care about where they go. This disregard for life at another hospital is a failure of the medical system and carried on far too long.

Of interest is that he chose neurosurgery, one of the most technical and prestigious of all surgery types, because it was considered the most lucrative. Of the 38 patients profiled for Dr. Death, 31 were harmed or 2 died as a result of his arrogance.

He is in prison for life and is not eligible for parole until July 2045.

Kudos to the two surgeons who were able to work with the Dallas prosecutor to stop him. Really stop him, not just pass the buck to the next hospital. Not just pass the buck on the next patient that would be harmed or killed. .

This was a very easy to listen to podcast. It was broken down over 7 episodes, although there are several additional bonus episodes that attached at the end of the episodes, from his appeal that he filed to the introduction of the actors that were in the television show.

About that, I had heard that there was a television show made of the first season that premiered in the time of the world is trying to kill us still of 2021. It ran until 2023 and is currently streaming on Peacock plus or available for purchase from Prime Video. But I don’t watch television and then I finished the first season of the podcast I removed it from my list and I had no idea that three other seasons had released. I will be listening to these. Dr. Duntsch, Dr. Fata, Dr. Paola, and Dr. Gumrukcu. I have some listening to catch up on.

But as a surgery nurse I have to question where are the nurses at the hospitals that kept failing him up? Were they part of the complainants that got him fired but not prosecuted? Did they just blink at his behavior and say “Well, that’s just Dr. D for you.”? Where were the scrub techs who can also voice objections? Granted, as the surgical team we don’t know a lot about patient follow up, except when the patients return for a revision. But surely question were raised among the teams.

This is also a failure of the surgical team. It is our duty to point out problems and mistakes that the surgeon might otherwise try to brush off.

I recommend this podcast to anyone who is a scrub tech or a surgical nurse. It is up to us to recognize and stop these surgeons when they are harming patients.