When Laura Johnson’s father Bill, a healthy and active senior, went for a simple medical procedure, Laura’s gut instincts told her to miss work and go with him to keep him safe. But Bill told her he had a friend accompanying him and assured Laura he would be fine because “how bad could they mess this up”. Tragically, Laura’s instincts were right. Her father was not safe in that hospital under their care. And the doctor responsible for Bill’s care, is the daughter of a doctor who is imprisoned fo...
Jun 14, 2021•29 min•Ep. 96
Medical error and harm can take many forms and occurs in almost every medical context, except perhaps during autopsies. So when a medical error occurs during a joyous event like childbirth, it can not only impact the immediate experience, but may also cause lifelong suffering and disability. This is what happened to Carol Sunnucks when she went to the hospital to give birth to her son Kai. It was a hard labour and they had to use a suction device to pull Kai out -- but the doctor failed to check...
May 31, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 95
Ashanti Daniel is one of those people who knew their career destiny as a child - and then made it come to fruition. As a nurse, Ashanti had the inside view of how the health care system operates - so when she got very sick and was hospitalized multiple times, she thought that being a health care worker would afford her legitimacy in the eyes of her medical peers. But Ashanti quickly discovered that being a black woman with ‘normal’ results from routine medical tests, trumped years of working as ...
May 17, 2021•52 min•Ep. 94
In the early hours of the 28th of July 2016, Colette McCulloch was hit and killed by a bus. Eighteen hours earlier Colette had walked out of the specialist care facility for autistic adults where she was being treated. Throughout Colette’s short life, her parents Andy and Amanda, sought out medical professionals to try to explain and ease their younger daughter’s extraordinary mind. Since Colette’s death Andy and Amanda have been fighting various medical and legal authorities to uncover the fail...
May 03, 2021•56 min•Ep. 93
Implanting plastic mesh inside our bodies doesn’t sound like a smart thing -- and it wouldn’t have happened to Michelle Hedgcoth if a previous medical error hadn’t damaged her body. Michelle was a healthy and happy career woman when she gave birth - but the doctor, who had given Michelle an episiotomy, failed to sew her back up after the baby was delivered. This failure would have devastating consequences on every aspect of Michelle’s life. In an effort to ‘fix’ their mistake, doctors performed ...
Apr 19, 2021•40 min•Ep. 92
Like the vast majority of people, you have probably taken an antibiotic at some point in your life. And it probably helped you. However, a class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones can cause permanent and severe damage -- this is known as fluoroquinolone toxicity, or, in the US, fluoroquinolone induced disability - FQID. This is a global health care problem that few know about -- or are warned about by their doctor. Why is that? In this episode, I chat with someone who has insight not only ...
Apr 05, 2021•57 min•Ep. 91
Multiple award winning author Marcus Sedgwick is best known for his popular fiction books, but his experiences with deeply entrenched medical gaslighting inspired his new book titled “All In Your Head - What happens when your doctor doesn’t believe you.” Marcus describes how he got sick with flu like symptoms...but they never went away. Marcus was thrown into a world he did not even know existed, a world where very sick people are disbelieved and often belittled by physicians. A world Marcus is ...
Mar 22, 2021•52 min•Ep. 90
When Alice Urbino was a young teenager she got the flu and never got better. Her mother - desperate for her daughter to recover - paid for what she thought was a legitimate treatment -- even though young Alice could plainly see the ‘lightning process’ was based on pseudoscience. Nevertheless, Alice was pressured to partake in a cult like atmosphere with absurd rituals that amounted to brain washing. Alice was made to believe that she chose to be sick, and that even expressing feelings of nausea ...
Mar 08, 2021•48 min•Ep. 89
Ryan Clark had it all. Successful career. Great relationships. Healthy body. When Ryan noticed a bit of hair loss, like many men, he took a common medication known as Propecia to promote hair growth. Unbeknownst to Ryan, Propecia can cause post-finasteride syndrome - causing sexual, neurological, physical and cognitive adverse reactions - it is a condition with no known cure and few, if any, effective treatments. In the ensuing years, Ryan’s body started to break down and unfamiliar and confusin...
Feb 22, 2021•44 min•Ep. 88
If a surgeon told you that they were going to implant plastic mesh around an organ -- perhaps your bladder or bowel -- and screw the ends into your pelvis and spine -- would you have that surgery? What if the surgeon also told you the plastic mesh may disintegrate and release toxins into your body causing multi system dysfunction -- and that the plastic may twist and puncture your organs or press against nerves causing suicidal level pain when you move -- would you have that surgery? What if the...
Feb 08, 2021•57 min•Ep. 87
When Dr Simon Breidert tried to discontinue use of the hair growth medication Finasteride, he experienced a myriad of very disturbing and disabling symptoms in multiple body systems. But the medical system doesn’t recognize Post Finasteride Syndrome and has labeled any one who says they experience those symptoms as hysterical. Dr Breidert was now confronted by his own profession’s deeply embedded medical bias. Simon was experiencing horrible physical symptoms, but the health care system had alre...
Feb 01, 2021•53 min•Ep. 86
It is an open secret that hospitals’ standard of practice is to deny, diminish or cover up their medical errors. When they occur, there is often immense pressure from hospital administrators on employees to conform to a narrative that protects the hospital. The employee may feel that their job and career are in jeopardy, and they may feel peer pressure to ‘not rock the boat’ and protect their health care colleagues. Nurse Shirley Barker found herself in exactly that pressure cooker when a police...
Jan 25, 2021•40 min•Ep. 85
Medicine is so messed up. It has been fatally bitten by its own dogma. When singer-songwriter Dana Parish suddenly got very sick, she quickly had a correct diagnosis of Lyme disease and was given the standard antibiotic treatment. But Dana never fully recovered and eventually ended up in heart failure. Dana saw many top doctors in New York and they all missed the ongoing underlying infection that would lead to Dana’s heart failure. None of these physicians could wrap their heads around the idea ...
Jan 18, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 84
When nurse Denise Crawley connected with me about sharing her experiences with her own medical errors in the workplace, I thought it was a great opportunity to hear from a health care worker from their side and perspective of medical errors. As Denise states, there is a big problem with how the health care system responds to medical error, especially how systemic contributors to medical error are rarely addressed, and how the response tends to focus on individual blame. This in turn fosters a me...
Jan 11, 2021•34 min•Ep. 83
When author Maya Dusenbery started to experience pain after a viral infection, she was introduced to a medical system that mostly marginalizes women and dismisses diseases that predominantly affect women. This of course will come as no surprise to any female that has a disease the medical system does not readily recognize. If that disease doesn’t have a biomarker yet, doctors will often attribute women’s physical symptoms as psychological in origin. This is known as medical gaslighting and its o...
Jan 04, 2021•40 min•Ep. 82
“We’re living in a horror movie” says Anton, speaking for his brother Holger who is so severely sick that he cannot eat or drink and has to be tube fed. Yet the Swedish medical system thinks Holger has a psychiatric disorder and has threatened to have him forcibly committed to an institution against his wishes. If the medical system succeeds, it will probably kill Holger. Anton, and the rest of Holger’s family, are fighting a medical system that does not recognize or understand the disease myalg...
Dec 28, 2020•43 min•Ep. 81
Medical knowledge is embryonic. They are still discovering new body parts. Sometimes medicine doesn’t break new ground, but has to be dragged into the light. A case in point is cannabis. The therapeutic value of cannabis has been known for millennia, yet modern medicine vilified the medication, pathologized cannabis users, while the legal system criminalized cannabis patients. Now we see the global movement making great headway toward decriminalizing and medicalizing cannabis. And as it is with ...
Dec 21, 2020•49 min•Ep. 80
Author and writer Maija Haavisto caught my attention with her article titled ‘ Medical Trauma: Gaslighting and Continuous Stress Eating Away at Your Self Worth ’. In her writing, Maija accurately captures the consequences of harmful medical experiences I witness in my counseling clients. As I’ve said elsewhere, medical error and trauma are the unacknowledged pandemics within our health care systems. Maija grew up in Finland, a healthy child until she got the flu as a teenager and never recovered...
Dec 14, 2020•44 min•Ep. 79
One of the good things about interviewing people about their medical error experiences is the feel good stories about making the health system safer, and making meaning out of trauma, a phenomenon known as post traumatic growth. In this interview with Jessica Pin, she shares the insights she’s learned about the gross deficiencies in the medical system where it intentionally maintains blind spots about female anatomy and female sexuality. A medical system where surgeons are performing procedures ...
Dec 07, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 78
When you’ve been sick since a child - as Jeanne McArdle has been - you gain a preternatural insight into the world of medicine and medical care. And if you have a disease unknown or misunderstood by medicine, you get the advantage of being an ‘outsider’ while inside the system. Of course, this cuts both ways: having a medically marginalized disease essentially guarantees medical harm, neglect, gaslighting and distrust of doctors. In this interview with Jeanne McArdle, she recounts the myriad way...
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 77
When yoga teacher Liz fell down a flight of stairs while moving a mattress and injured her foot, she had no idea that multiple misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis would cause her years of medical gaslighting and chronic pain. Liz’s health care experience is littered with story after story of incredible incompetence, false accusations and patient blaming. With a few exceptions, most of us are raised to believe that our health care systems are looking out for our best interests, that they are self c...
Nov 23, 2020•38 min•Ep. 76
When Daria Oller got sick with mild Covid symptoms in mid March, she assumed she’d be back to full health in a week or two. Now over 7 months later, Daria -- a physical therapist, athletic trainer, runner and dancer -- is still beset with physical symptoms, especially a delayed and dysfunctional response to exercise, known as post exertional malaise - the hallmark symptom of another post viral disease called myalgic encephalomyelitis, or MEcfs. Daria is also dealing with cognitive symptoms that ...
Nov 16, 2020•37 min•Ep. 75
Unless you’ve experienced it yourself, it is hard to fathom the cruelty and abuse by some doctors and nurses on sick, vulnerable and dying people. It is hard to reconcile that the ultimate helping professions can have so many people who exhibit truly sadistic and sociopathic behaviour. To understand how ubiquitous medical abuse and neglect is in our health care systems we only have to look at the recent example in the news of the death of Joyce Echaquan who livestreamed abuse by nurses in the da...
Nov 09, 2020•59 min•Ep. 74
What is the connection between a ‘weak bladder’ in childhood and spine surgery in adulthood? For Melinda Maxwell, a diagnosis of craniocervical instability (or CCI) provided clarity of that connection after decades of doctors dismissing her symptoms or giving a misdiagnosis. Craniocervical instability, as its name implies, is essentially a mechanical failure where the head joins the spine causing it to be unstable -- and it can cause a wide range of mysterious and disabling symptoms that are har...
Nov 02, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 73
Jonah McGarva is one of what will be millions of people around the globe with Long Covid. And many pandemic survivors that develop Long Covid are frustrated by their government’s lack of appropriate response. Most government health leaders barely mention - or even warn the public - about Long Covid. This is known as political invisibilization. And it works by refusing to acknowledge an issue, or in this instance, a disease. It is reminiscent of the early years of the AIDS pandemic when politicia...
Oct 26, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 72
When Tracy Fossum had all the symptoms of a heart attack, the emergency room doctors thought Tracy was drug seeking and sent her away. Then her pain specialist physician implored her to go to a different hospital’s emergency room because they were heart attack specialists and would have to run appropriate tests. But they thought Tracy was drug seeking too and made her wait 6 hours before being seen by a doctor --- and even then and in spite of being in immense pain for hours, the doctors and nur...
Oct 19, 2020•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 71
When Melissa Shiff had surgery on a cyst in her back, the surgeon nicked her spinal fluid canal causing it to leak spinal fluid. This medical error would lead to more errors and medical harm for Melissa. As Melissa wrote to me after the interview: “I get internal tremors, non epileptic seizures, slurred speech, sometimes I lose the ability to move my limbs and need to be carried and of course can barely stand or walk.” The health system proved useless and essentially abandoned Melissa to suffer ...
Oct 12, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 70
Dr Terri Lewis is a clinical educator with more than 30 years of experience in the development and administration of community rehabilitation and counseling programs. Terri’s insights into the machinations of the medical system come from both her professional career and her role as a mother. When Terri’s child experienced pain, it was by and large dismissed by doctors as if children were from a different planet where the species didn’t experience pain. By ignoring what Terri’s son was reporting,...
Oct 05, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 69
When journalist Miranda Levy couldn’t sleep due to a relationship upheaval, she sought support from her doctor and fell down a multi year rabbit hole into the wacky world of psychiatric medicine. Miranda lost herself in a health care system that has little understanding of the powerful psychiatric drugs they dispense like candy. The health care system also has little motivation to acknowledge the torturous effects that can come from withdrawal from these drugs. Miranda doesn’t mince her words ab...
Sep 28, 2020•38 min•Ep. 68
If you had any doubt the medical system, in collusion with the legal, political and insurance systems, were corrupt, those doubts will be waylaid when you hear Beau Tiffany’s experiences with medical error. Beau has had to endure and battle biased systems since he slipped and fell hard down wet stair steps, causing him multiple injuries. But it was a wrong diagnosis that somehow got into Beau’s electronic health records that led to 2 surgeries for illnesses he did not have. These needless surger...
Sep 21, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 67
