-Do you have a drug-and-alcohol problem, sir?
-No, ma'am. Never have. -I talked to a doctor who said
that you are like a serial killer.
-I'll deal with that in the context of libel later.
**
-There's this inherent faith in doctors.
Because if we can't trust our doctor, who can we trust?
-Christopher Duntsch really believed
that he was unstoppable.
-I thought finally found someone that's gonna be able to fix me.
-"I can fix you" was like the magic word.
Boom. That's all I heard.
-He said to them, "I can make you better."
That makes what Christopher Duntsch did
so devious.
**
-He fooled everyone.
-Couldn't move my arms or my legs and I was decapitated.
-I was paralyzed totally on the right side.
**
-She bled to death.
**
-He was sociopathic...
narcissistic...
a madman.
-Have you ever been under the influence of cocaine
while you were taking care of a patient?
-I take the Fifth.
-He carried lots of secrets.
While I was pregnant, there was an affair going on.
-How many times did y'all have a date in the office?
-We probably tried to get together
two times a week, maybe three.
**
-His life is really spinning out of control.
-How many people do you have to cripple?
How many people do you have to kill?
-We just felt that we had
the medical equivalent of a serial killer on our hands.
[ Siren wails ]
-He thought he was God.
-He's a stone-cold killer.
**
-I'm Jerry Summers,
and Christopher Duntsch
was my best friend.
**
We met summer before our junior-high year.
We were both football players.
My first impression of Chris
was a real smart, hardworking guy.
That's just the way he was, the way he was wired.
His family is really warm, loving family.
Very faith-based.
-Christopher Duntsch couldn't have come from
a more all-American family.
He was the oldest of three.
His dad did some missionary work.
His mom was a schoolteacher.
His parents were lovely people who doted on their son.
-When I first met Chris, we were 12, 13 years old.
He seemed to have a typical Southern upbringing.
**
We went to high school in Cordova, Tennessee,
at Evangelical Christian School.
All the football players kind of hung out together.
Chris wasn't the most athletic guy,
but he was so driven in football.
If we were required to work out one time a day,
he would be there twice.
He was always wanting to do more than everybody else.
-He had a supreme confidence in his abilities.
He wouldn't give up.
If he wanted to learn a drill,
he would just keep doing it over and over and over,
and he believed in this philosophy
that if you just work hard enough,
you just keep practicing, you can overcome.
-Chris was, like, a straight-A student.
You know, he worked very hard in school.
But Chris was about Chris.
He had a temper. I mean, he --
he could snap pretty quick if you pushed him.
You know, I saw him get mad several times at people.
I don't think he cared as much about other people's feelings.
-He was a little bit of a loner, but he was confident
because he was successful
in the classroom and on the field and with girls.
When you look at him, you think
that guy has a lot going on for him.
**
Chris lived with my grandmother and I
when he was in undergraduate school.
He came home saying that he was going to be a doctor,
and it did not surprise me in the least bit.
-He was gonna get through medical school.
That's just the way he was driven.
-On paper, he had perfect credentials.
He definitely liked to boast about his own abilities.
In his mind, he was never anything
other than the best, the smartest.
**
-He trained in neurosurgery in Memphis
at the University of Tennessee program,
and he did a fellowship
at the Semmes Murphey Spine Institute in Memphis.
[ Monitor beeping ]
-He wanted to be a neurosurgeon.
Most people, they're either
on the research side or they're on the medical side.
And he wanted to cover both sides.
And he did.
Chris really believed he was probably
going to cure cancer and save the world.
**
-In the story of Dunstch's childhood,
we want to point to some kind of smoking gun,
but there was no reason to believe
he was anything other than how he presented himself.
[ Monitor beeping ]
I think that makes it scarier.
**
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-I was working at the Gold Club
on the night that I met Chris.
He came in with his friend Jerry,
and he had a whole table full of women.
All the other girls were kind of fighting
over that spot at the table.
-We had a night for a while
where we would go to a strip club once a week.
-You could tell we were interested in each other.
Another friend of mine kind of said,
"Hey, let me introduce you to him."
I was like, "Oh, he's a doctor
and he's charming and he's handsome."
And then we had a few drinks, and I went back to his house.
I was swept off my feet.
Chris was the dream guy
everyone will tell you about in, like, the fairy tale.
-He pulled her out of the club.
He saw her and wanted to save her.
I guess he loved her.
-First, he was like, "Hey, let's go to Vegas, get married."
He wanted me to think that everything
was just picture-perfect.
But I got pregnant the first night that we slept together.
He was pissed.
Eventually, when we got past the rough patch,
he seemed to be on board with my pregnancy.
He said, "I've got a couple offers
to go to either San Diego, Dallas, or New York."
And I was like, "Well, I'm from Dallas. Let's just go."
**
-He said, "Wherever I go, are you going with me?
Are you coming with me?" I thought it sounded fun.
Dallas sounded like a nice place to be.
-We moved into The W.
-Pulling up to The W. Then the guy jumps out.
"Oh, Chris, Jerry.
Can I drive you tonight, Jerry? You need anything?"
You know, they're just kissing your ass,
you know, left and right.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-Duntsch, he was being paid a really big salary,
and he, you know, had it made.
**
-Baylor Plano needed a neurosurgeon up there,
so it fit perfect that he was gonna go up there
and start a career in neurosurgery.
-He told me that the doctors there were very prominent
amongst the Dallas spine community.
People were wanting him to come into their hospital,
and they were lining up to come see him.
-First thing I heard about Dr. Duntsch
was that he was coming from a big, powerful program in Memphis
and he had a couple of PhDs
and he was supposed to be this hot-shot surgeon.
-They had plans to put him on a billboard.
Christopher Duntsch was going to be
their new rising-star neurosurgeon.
**
-The first time I met Dr. Duntsch
was in the operating suites at Baylor Plano.
I was scrubbing on a case,
and Dr. Duntsch was close by
scrubbing to go do one of his cases.
The way that he introduced himself was fairly unusual.
He stated that he was the best neurosurgeon in Dallas
and he was going to clean up all the spine work in Dallas.
I was like going, "Who is this guy?"
**
-Dr. Duntsch rubbed people the wrong way right off the bat
because he came in with these
established neurosurgeons and spine surgeons in town,
saying none of them knew what the heck they were doing.
There was a new sheriff in town named Christopher Duntsch
and he was here to clean up Dallas.
**
-He was brought on board at Baylor,
and they had all these great plans for him,
and he started operating.
**
The first surgery there was a man named Lee Passmore.
-He had had a previous surgery that apparently had failed
and he was still having a lot of pain.
So we were gonna go in and take out his L5-S1 disc,
which is the simplest disc to take out from the front.
-The anterior approach to the spine is something
that spine guys don't know how to do.
They have to hire us to get to the spine from the front.
-First time I met Duntsch, basically introduced himself
as God's gift to spine surgery in the State of Texas...
that he had come to save all the patients in Texas
from all this horrible, lousy spine surgery
that was being done.
And that kind of shocked me a little bit,
and especially for a guy just out of his fellowship.
I mean, you want a surgeon to be a little arrogant,
to think highly of himself, but not that much.
And at the same time, the guy's got two PhDs.
He came from this big, powerful training program in Memphis.
And so I thought either he's all that or -- or he's full of shit.
[ Monitor beeping ]
Just from his moves and what he was doing,
I could tell he hadn't done this operation very much at all.
So I started to try to tactfully walk him through it.
What he was doing just --
It just didn't make a lot of sense to me.
He had taken out the whole disc,
and we start getting into all this bleeding.
Got all this blood. I've got two suckers in the wound
to control the blood, and I'm like,
"I can't see where the bleeding's coming from."
And he's working blindly through the blood.
**
I said, "Stop. Let me get control of this bleeding.
And then I'll let you do whatever you want to do."
He says, "That's not necessary. I can feel it."
And I'm like, "No, no, no. You're not gonna feel it.
What you're doing is unsafe."
**
And that's when I kind of lost it and said,
"No, you're gonna let me get this, or I'm leaving right now."
You could've heard a pin drop because there was definitely
some tension in that room.
I mean, the guy couldn't operate. He was terrible!
It was clear to me the guy was nuts.
**
-With Lee Passmore, Duntsch did a few things wrong.
He misaligned the cage.
**
He also basically put a screw through a nerve.
Even though that screw has been removed,
he's got permanent damage to that nerve,
and so he suffers constantly from pain.
**
Lee's surgery was a complete botch,
and Duntsch would have known it.
**
Pretty early on while he was at Baylor Plano,
things started going horribly wrong.
The neurosurgical community is a pretty small community.
They talk. They know each other.
Word was already out that Duntsch was a problem.
**
-I pretty much broadcast to the other surgeons I work with
that I was never working with Duntsch again.
-Dr. Hoyle and I were partners for 15 years.
He's a close friend.
When I got that call from Dr. Hoyle,
I knew we had trouble.
He said, like, "Randy, do not scrub with him.
We need to shut him down because he's a disaster."
**
-Duntsch came to Dallas.
He brought his best friend, Jerry Summers, with him.
His girlfriend, Wendy Young, came with him,
and they lived in this really nice house near Baylor Plano.
**
-I thought everything was going great.
I thought that he was expanding his practice.
He had ended up hiring a nurse practitioner, Kimberly Morgan.
**
The first time I met Kimberly Morgan
was at our home office.
At the moment, I didn't think anything bad.
I just know they spent a lot of time in his office.
One night, they went out to this event, him and Kimberly.
When they came home, back to our house,
they were all very drunk.
Chris fell on the ground, and Kimberly
laid on top of Christopher at that point and kissed him.
And I just felt my blood boil.
That night was the night I realized
that Kimberly was more than just his assistant.
[ Keyboard clacking ]
-Will you tell me your full name, please?
-Kimberly Keen Morgan.
-What do you do for work?
-I'm a family nurse practitioner.
-You get introduced to Wendy Young in August of 2011?
-Yes, sir, as his secretary.
She moved down here, and she was pregnant,
and her husband would be moving down with her.
-And what were the lies that you concluded
they were telling you about all of that?
-He told me that she, in fact, was not the secretary,
that she was actually someone he had dated,
and then she became pregnant and that that was his child.
And he tried multiple times to get her to have an abortion.
-The day I went into labor with Aiden,
Chris had to help the nurse on duty that day deliver my son.
I thought he was gonna pass out.
I'm like, "You know, I'm depending on you here to get me through this."
I'm pushing. Nothing's coming.
And then finally he slid right out,
and he was like, "Oh, my gosh! It is a beautiful boy!"
**
I came home from the hospital,
and they had moved all of my belongings
out of my master bedroom
into the guest bedroom.
He was gonna go back to what was calling him.
Kimberly.
**
-I loved anything outdoors,
whether it's hiking, camping, skiing.
Anything outside
was where I found my happy place.
**
I originally injured my back
because I was unloading trucks,
and I got to where I couldn't even stand up.
-Yeah. -I was --
-It was difficult for him to walk.
-Just -- So I was going to pain management.
The pain management handed me a card,
and the name on the card was Christopher Duntsch.
He was supposed to be a rock-star neurosurgeon.
So we interviewed this Christopher Duntsch.
-Yeah. -Boy, was he amazing.
-He was very charming. -He sounded amazing.
-He was.
-"I can fix you" was, like, the magic word.
Boom. That's all I heard.
I thought that he was gonna be
the man that could help me walk again.
I remember talking to him prior to the surgery.
There were no signs at all
of anything being out of the ordinary.
He seemed completely normal.
**
-There was a very prominent head-and-neck general surgeon
at Baylor Plano by the name of Bob Steckler.
And somehow Dr. Duntsch got ahold of him
to do one of these access procedures,
the ones that Hoyle and I were refusing to do.
Dr. Steckler got on the phone
and said, like, "Randy, I don't know how to do this.
Can you come in and help me do it?"
I said, "Yeah, I'll help you do it."
I work with spine surgeons every single day.
I see bad surgeons here, but there's nothing
that comes close to the level of incompetence
that Christopher Duntsch exhibited.
The case that was done on Barry Morguloff
was a very routine case, one of the easiest things
a neurosurgeon should be able to do.
[ Saw buzzing ]
Dr. Duntsch came in with his physician assistant
and started gnawing away at the human spine.
[ Tool whirring ]
Floundering. I was just, like, going,
"He doesn't even know what he's doing."
I -- I couldn't believe it.
[ Tool whirring ]
**
-I'm very reticent to start blasting away
in front of the nursing staff at an incompetent colleague,
and so I tried to soften everything up
so that no one would panic.
I started defining the parameters
so that he could do it properly.
Even after I defined the regional anatomy for him,
Dr. Duntsch still couldn't do the case right.
**
-When I came out of surgery and woke up, they asked how I felt.
I told them I felt like I got hit by a truck.
-I checked on Mr. Morguloff in the recovery room.
Dr. Duntsch ran past me.
I said, "Are you going to re-image Mr. Morguloff?
Because he looks like he's in more pain than he was
before he came in."
"No." He wouldn't do it.
-Duntsch comes out of every surgery saying it's a huge success,
and he did that exact same thing with Barry.
He was ignoring all of the things that Barry was saying.
"I'm in pain. I need some help. What happened here?"
-We're first taught to do no harm.
We have to take the Hippocratic Oath
when we graduate from medical school.
And you have to do everything humanly possible
to do right for that patient.
And he crossed a line very early in his career.
-Right away I was having pain in my left leg.
Everybody said, "It's normal after-surgery stuff.
The pain will go away."
It just got worse.
-And I think what's disheartening
is Dr. Duntsch knew
about Barry's past addiction history.
He said, "Well, he's just fine.
He's just overexaggerating because that's what addicts do."
And, unfortunately, because he was a doctor, I believed him.
**
-We go because it's a follow-up visit,
and I'm telling him about my pain.
And Dr. Duntsch was extremely inebriated.
He was slurring his speech.
His nurse had to take up for him
and was explaining what he couldn't.
And we were out of there. That was it. That was it.
-From the time he got to Dallas, there were certainly people
who suspected that he was using drugs and alcohol.
Were the signs ignored?
It's certainly plausible that people
were either rationalizing what they were seeing
or just sweeping it under the rug.
**
-At that point in time, I went for a second opinion.
The physician that looked at the X-ray
told me it looked like a bomb had gone off in my back.
**
And that was like an "oh..." moment.
**
-With Barry, he left in bone fragments
just kind of loose in his body touching his nerves.
Duntsch also left hardware.
-All that I wanted was the pain to stop.
The only thing that makes the pain stop were meds,
and you have to take them as prescribed.
But as an addict, it's extremely difficult,
so I had some issues.
-He'd fall asleep in the middle of eating,
not really be able to walk to bed.
-I was not doing well.
I'm, you know, fighting depression.
I went into a psychiatric facility...
to keep from killing myself.
**
It was hard. It was hard.
**
I couldn't do it.
I tasted the barrel of a 9-millimeter.
**
And it was very hard to go on, but I had a wife and child.
**
-I had lost him.
I'm angry because...
it completely changed our life.
We just try to get through the day.
-That's probably what has done the most damage to my family,
is I don't have the ability any longer
to get out and do the things that I used to do.
Pain rules my life.
**
I wrote a letter to the medical board
telling them the whole thing about what happened,
this guy needed to be looked at.
-After the Morguloff case, I was outraged.
Christopher Duntsch can't do the simplest case in spine surgery.
Baylor Plano's a very good hospital,
and I had privileges there,
and so I had some moral obligation
to let the powers that be at that hospital
know what was going on and told them,
"You're gonna have problems
when he starts taking care of really sick people."
**
-Did personnel from Baylor ever ask you about Dr. Duntsch?
-With regards to...? -Anything.
Is he -- Is he --
"What do you know? Is he doing drugs?
Do you know anything about alcohol?
Is he being weird?" I mean, anything like that.
-No, sir. -Never once?
-No, sir.
-According to the chief of surgery,
even though he was not having great results,
they weren't outrageously horrible.
They didn't have enough material, they thought,
to sanction him or restrict his privileges.
And so he went on to operate on his friend Jerry Summers.
-I had a bad neck.
I slammed into the back of a car
and I messed my neck up.
I thought that it was a pretty routine surgery,
that if he did anybody's right, he'd do mine right.
[ Indistinct conversations, monitor beeping ]
-Dr. Duntsch thought Mr. Summers
had some diseased discs in his cervical spine.
The idea was to take the diseased discs out
that were compressing the spinal cord
and put something in their place.
-Night before the surgery,
probably only slept maybe four to five hours.
I was anxious to get it fixed, of course,
but I also was a little nervous about the surgery.
**
-I didn't know Christopher Duntsch.
I asked him, "Is there anything in particular I can provide
for you for this surgery as your anesthesiologist?"
And he actually said,
"No. I could do this case with my eyes closed."
Well, okay. Another cocky surgeon.
The surgery is proceeding and moving ahead.
Kimberly Morgan
was Dr. Duntsch's first assistant
during the procedure.
The interactions between Kimberly Morgan
and Christopher Duntsch were...interesting.
The talk between the two was highly sexual.
Christopher Duntsch would ask for a drill
and then comment how he wanted to drill her.
This was the most sexually inappropriate conversation
I've ever heard in an operating room.
[ Monitor beeping ]
About two thirds of the way through the case,
I start hearing suctioning blood.
And it's hooked up to a suction canister
which actually has a digital readout.
I think it started off somewhere around 100 milliliters.
For the type of surgery that Jerry Summers had,
the typical amount of blood we lose for the entire case
may be 50 milliliters.
And I'm watching the digital readout get higher and higher.
I asked Christopher Duntsch, "Is everything okay?"
And he said, "Yes, yes. Everything is fine."
But everything is clearly not fine.
By the time he got it under control,
we had lost about 1,200 milliliters --
about a fifth of his blood volume.
-As soon as I woke up,
I couldn't move my arms or my legs.
Feels like a big pile of bricks
is on your body
and your head's sticking out.
I knew something was wrong.
-You have minutes to hours to potentially reverse
for the damage to not be permanent.
If there's a window of time to do something,
it's closing very, very fast.
-And I just remember laying in the bed
and I wanted to just go to sleep.
-Dr. Duntsch went deeper than he should have.
Jerry Summers was effectively decapitated
during the operation.
[ Monitor beeping ]
[ Monitor beeping rapidly ]
**
-I remember dying. And I remember seeing a light.
**
And I just remember everyone saying,
"Open your eyes. Open your eyes."
I was decapitated.
**
There was anger towards him at first.
I was definitely like, "[Bleep] you, Chris."
He had paralyzed me, and my family was there.
My friends were there. You know?
That was a horrific experience.
I was fighting my own battle in the hospital.
**
-I actually went in to go see Jerry.
I got, like, nauseated.
I had to go in the bathroom and put water in my face
because it made me sick in my stomach to see him like that.
I thought that I might see Chris.
I thought maybe he would come check on Jerry,
you know, one of his best friends.
But no sight of him at all.
**
-All of the nurses and surgical techs are ready to go back in,
but Duntsch disappears.
He goes into this other surgery and leaves Jerry Summers.
-The nursing staff was so disturbed
by the conduct of the operation
and Dr. Duntsch's behavior and lack of urgency.
The nursing supervisor was notified.
The CEO was notified. Everybody knew about the case.
Dr. Duntsch, he turned his best friend into a quadriplegic.
Mr. Summers is a young man.
I mean, it was very disturbing to me
and everybody else on staff there.
**
Dr. Duntsch was blaming
all this bleeding on the anesthesiologist
for doing a rough intubation, which was just total fantasy.
**
-Dr. Duntsch made another comment.
I was told that he blamed me,
saying I made him a quadriplegic
by intubating him.
The way that I managed him from an anesthetic standpoint
is above and beyond caution.
This guy had basically
butchered Jerry Summers' spinal cord.
**
-Chris, like I say, he was a big talker.
If something was to go wrong,
he could talk you into thinking it wasn't wrong,
that it wasn't his fault.
You know. Sad situation all around.
Makes me sick every time I think about it, you know?
**
-Jerry Summers was parked in the ICU, still quadriplegic.
His neck was so unstable,
when the nursing staff tried to move him,
his heart rate would go down to like 10.
[ Flatline ]
-He flatlined three times in a 24-hour period.
I really did not think he was going to make it out of the hospital.
[ Monitor beeping ]
-I was on my back.
You hear that beeping over and over and over again.
[ Monitor beeping ]
You know, they're pumping you full of drugs
trying to get you to sleep.
And I didn't sleep day after day
after day after day after day after day.
Would drive anyone insane.
**
-There was no hope for him to resume getting any function
back in his arms and legs at that time.
**
-Another doctor came in and tried to repair the damage
to Jerry's spinal cord.
But he couldn't completely.
And so Jerry was left unable to move.
[ Monitor beeping ]
-Jerry Summers, he was freaking out,
didn't understand what had gone wrong.
-He was screaming, and he was yelling.
The nursing staff couldn't even move him
for fear of his heart stopping.
-I wasn't getting to see Chris.
I was begging to see him and wanting to see him,
and he wasn't around.
**
I didn't have the proper care
that I -- that I needed,
and my voice was all I had.
And I was screaming.
**
-Jerry Summers was telling the nursing staff
in the ICU at Baylor Plano
that he was using drugs, cocaine, with Dr. Duntsch
the night before the operation.
**
-I was screaming that we were doing an eight-ball
before my surgery.
He and I both were cokeheads.
**
-When I found out Jerry was paralyzed, I was shocked.
I did not realize that anything had gone wrong.
I heard that Jerry woke up screaming in pain...
[ Monitor beeping rapidly ]
...and was yelling that him and Chris
were out doing an eight-ball of cocaine
the night before his surgery.
**
Chris seemed very upset.
He seemed like, "How could this happen?"
**
"Why would my best friend say all these slanderous things?
It just made me look really bad
in front of the entire hospital."
That's the first time I really noticed
that something was wrong.
**
-Jerry and Chris had been friends since junior high.
They lost touch I think somewhat when Chris went off to college,
but then he came back to Memphis, and they reconnected.
-When we were like 19 years old,
I remember we were driving down the road,
and he was like, "You want to take a hit of acid?"
And I was like, "Yeah, I'll take a hit of acid with you."
We popped, hit acid.
I had never taken a hit of acid before.
Christopher Duntsch gave me my first hit of acid.
-Jerry had a reputation here in town. I'll tell you that.
He took things, you know, to that nth degree.
I mean, he didn't know when to -- when to stop.
-Chris and Jerry were the party boys.
-Jerry was known as a big-time drug dealer in town.
-Chris was very intrigued
with a lot of the stuff going on in my life.
I would say that he and I both were cokeheads.
His first drug of choice would be cocaine.
-When he was doing his residency and things like that,
and the research, I believe that's when he took it
to another level, as far as partying.
**
-I told my wife
plenty of years before he became a neurosurgeon
that I wouldn't let him operate on me or anybody in my family.
I don't want a doctor that's staying up
partying and going to strip clubs
and you hear doing a lot of drugs
operating on me.
-I was given a deposition of one of Jerry's old girlfriends.
And she described a lot of the party life
that Chris and Jerry had together in Memphis.
-How long did this drug party go on that night?
-All night to the next day.
-Okay. Until the sun came up?
-Well beyond the sun came up,
'cause Chris had to go to work the next day, and he went.
**
-Now, why does that stick out in your mind
that he was leaving this all-night drug party
with his lab coat on to go work at the children's hospital?
-Because most people would call in.
After you spend a night using cocaine,
most people become paranoid and want to stay in the house,
and he was totally fine going to work.
-Jerry says, "We did cocaine the night before the surgery."
This then causes the hospital to launch a big investigation
into what happened
and Chris' competence as a surgeon.
**
-There was enough evidence there
to get him removed from staff.
But Baylor Plano suspended Dr. Duntsch
for approximately three weeks.
-Jerry made the allegation about the drugs
about four days after his surgery.
So Duntsch was sent by the hospital
to get drug-tested that day.
-Did anybody else, to your understanding,
submit to a urine test? -Dr. Duntsch.
-Do you know if he ever submitted a urine sample?
-Yes, he did.
-The results of that is that it's negative.
-When I said that we were doing an eight-ball
before the surgery, that was totally untrue.
I totally said it just because he wasn't around
and I was yelling and screaming for my doctor and --
There was no drug use the night before the surgery.
-The night before Jerry's surgery, Chris was at home.
That night, I don't think there was any chance
he was doing an eight-ball of cocaine with Jerry.
Woman on P.A.: Dr. Davis, telephone, please.
-Duntsch was sent to see a counselor
to be evaluated for his mental-health fitness
and also to see if there was any concerns
related to drug or alcohol,
and that counselor ultimately cleared him.
-I called the chief of surgery back up and yelled at him.
I predicted this outcome a month ago.
[ Monitor beeping ]
Christopher Duntsch -- he needs to be stopped
at this institution immediately.
They wanted to give him another chance,
and they wanted him to continue on
practicing neurosurgery at their hospital.
[ Monitor beeping ]
**
By the winter of 2012, at least five spine surgeons
had called the Texas Medical Board.
Baylor Plano should have called the Texas Medical Board.
**
-Had heard through the grapevine
that more people were being injured.
I called the medical board back.
"Hey! What's the deal with my case?!"
"We're still investigating. We can't tell you a thing."
They didn't really seem to care.
**
-The medical board will tell you
there's kind of a hierarchy.
A patient making a complaint about a doctor?
Bottom of the barrel.
A doctor making a complaint about another doctor?
Well, maybe in the middle somewhere.
A hospital making a complaint to the medical board
about one of their doctors?
Four-alarm fire, urgent, most highest priority.
But Baylor Plano did not report Dr. Duntsch.
**
I do not exactly what happened
in the C-suites at Baylor Plano,
but business and economic and legal decisions were made
which clearly put Dr. Duntsch's career
and Dr. Duntsch's interests over the patients' interests.
The imaging tests we did on Mr. Summers were so clear.
It was so clear that the operation
was a completely horrendous procedure.
**
-Before my surgery, I didn't know of
any bad outcomes that he had had.
Thinking that I was going to be in the hospital maybe two days,
and Chris said I'd be back at his house
and he'd be taking care of me.
And then a house got dropped on me.
**
-Three weeks after Jerry's surgery,
Christopher Duntsch goes back to the hospital
saying, "Hey, I've got more patients I need to operate on.
When are you guys going to let me start up again?"
So the hospital was kind of feeling a lot of pressure,
I think, at this point to allow Duntsch to come back in.
-They determine that Chris Duntsch
is okay to start operating again,
but he needs to start with just smaller, minor,
day-surgery type operations.
And his very next patient is Kellie Martin.
**
-Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong
in Kellie's surgery.
[ Monitor beeping ]
**
-Baylor allows Christopher Duntsch
to begin operating again,
and his very first patient is Kellie Martin.
Kellie's surgery is very simple.
**
-We're getting ready for Christmas
and getting all the decorations setup.
And we usually do that as a family.
We have a small family,
but we spend a lot of time together.
And my mother would decorate the house.
Christmas was definitely her favorite.
**
-Her and my dad were taking
Christmas decorations down from the attic,
and she fell down and she hurt her back.
-But Kellie's pain continued after the -- the fall.
Kept going on, and I could tell
some days she could do chores around the house
and some days she couldn't get in and out of bed.
-It was actually affecting her daily life.
**
So, my mother, after she fell, she did go to our family doctor.
-Gave us this card, and it said "Dr. Christopher Duntsch."
-When you hear the schools that he went to
and, um, how prestigious it was
to be able to have him as your physician,
you felt really lucky to be able to get in.
-Dr. Duntsch seemed very knowledgeable.
-He came across very passionate about helping people
and wanting to make them feel better.
And he said, "I completely understand
what you're going through. I know exactly how to fix it."
**
-On the day of the surgery, Kellie, she was concerned.
You could see it on her face a little bit.
And -- But, you know, I was there to reassure her,
and I kissed her and I told her,
"I love you, and I'll see you in an hour."
**
-My mother's surgery there was a nerve
that was touching one of the discs.
This surgery was explained to us to be in and out in a day,
almost so routine like a cavity.
[ Monitor beeping ]
During my mother's surgery,
Dr. Duntsch came out several times,
explained that it was going fine,
and then he said that my mother's having issues
coming out of the anesthesia
and, "We might keep her here for a while longer."
He doesn't sound concerned, but he doesn't sound cheerful.
We're waiting in the waiting room over an hour.
So I went over to the desk and asked,
"Can I get an update on Kellie Martin?"
And the nurse went over and looked at her computer
and said, "Oh, she's actually on a different floor.
She's in ICU."
And I said, "What?!"
We went up there.
And I said, "I need an update on my mother, Kellie Martin."
And when I saw the nurse's face, we knew something was wrong.
[ Monitor beeping ]
-The anesthesiologist kept saying, you know,
"I can't get her blood pressure under control.
What's going on? Do you have bleeding?"
And Duntsch was saying, "No, I don't have any bleeding.
Everything's fine."
The anesthesiologist told Duntsch,
"We've got to shut this down. You've got to close her up.
We've got to get her out of here. Something is wrong."
Duntsch does close her up. They come out of the surgery.
And as they're waking Kellie up, she begins screaming.
**
-The nursing staff tells me
that her legs were blue and lifeless
from the mid-thigh down.
-She's grabbing at the legs and clawing them.
The ICU staff is so alarmed by this
that they re-intubate her. They put her back under.
They think, "We're going back into surgery."
But that's not what happens.
-I just happened to be up in the intensive care unit.
I saw Christopher Duntsch
in front of the room of another ICU patient.
All of the rapid-response team
and the intensive-care unit doctors
were all rushing down there.
There's something terrible going on in that room.
-They begin working on her.
Kellie Martin ends up coding right there.
-Christopher Duntsch is calmly typing a note.
His patient is coding like a few feet from him,
and he's totally unperturbed.
It's a picture I think that I'll always have in my mind.
I'll never forget it.
**
[ Monitor beeping ]
[ Monitor beeping rapidly ]
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