An Answer For Sam Spagnola: "Mary, What Would You Have People Do On Your Behalf?"

In my last thread, Sam Spagnola and I have been engaged in a bit of a pissing contest. I'm quite certain it's been very entertaining for some of the locals. I've decided to "top-level" (Sue's term, not mine) a response to Sam's last question . . . which was,

"Again Mary, what would you have people do on your behalf?"

Honestly, sometimes I really want to cry. My head hurts from banging it against the wall. And the tips of my fingers are numb from pounding out the same answers over and over again.

Here's my response:

AGAIN Sam, that question has been asked and answered over and over and over again on my blog and in the various threads of the last few days.

Dennis Quaid and his wife were all over 60 Minutes and all of the morning talk shows yesterday talking about a "broken healthcare system" and the "White Wall" they encountered when their newborn twins almost died due to a medical error.

In stark contrast, I have been blogging on my own situation for three years (about what happened to me when I intervened to help a critically-ill newborn whose "care" can only be described as a series of medical errors) . . . begging & pleading for a tiniest fraction of the press attention Quaid has gotten simply because he is a big movie star.

As a doctor in public service - brought home with public money, I was professionally pulverized (by a "non-profit" no less) for making a snap decision in the middle of the night - defying threats against my livelihood in order to do the right thing by a patient (not even my own).

It's what JR or Cone or Sue or Roch or YOU would have expected me to do had the baby involved been your child or grandchild.

I've blogged about arrogance and incompetence and threats and retaliation and cover-ups and wasted/monopolize resources and MORE (legal) retaliation and perjury and contempt and fraud.

For my trouble, I've been ridiculed, taunted, insulted, banned, de-linked, and mis-diagnosed (to this day, I cannot put into words how personally hurtful and professionally despicable I found/still find Sue Polinski's self-serving "malignant narcissism" stunt to be) . . . everything but treated like a living, breathing, deeply-hurt human being trying/fighting/clawing to get her life and destiny back (that is, until recently - my sincere/humble thanks are offered to MeB/Joe/Bubba/Billy).

Joe Guarino nailed it in the commentary on his thread. As a lowly, "no-name", "ordinary" employed physician in public service I was powerless.

But people simply do not care. When it comes to medicine, they want Walmart - everything instant and cheap or even free. Then they can't understand why bad things happen when our system is so focused on instant and cheap. Moreover, they think all doctors are rich and greedy and can roll with the punches.

And they are just wrong - especially about doctors in primary care.

What was done to me should never have happened . . . and even if it did, as a doctor in federal & state service programs, I should have been able to pick up a phone ten years ago, call a regulatory agency, blow my whistle without fear of retaliation, and PREVENT with one or two phone calls what ten years in our *&^%$#@!+ regulatory and legal systems have not been able to repair.

You yourself are sympathetic (at least I think you are) to the fact that after being screwed by the medical establishment (wagons circled - deaf, dumb and blind), I got a bum ride in the NC legal system (shafted by lawyers with perhaps not as many scruples as you) . . . and have not been able to get anyone anywhere to lift a finger to address it - no matter what the law may say about perjury being a serious infraction - punishable by fines and jail time.

I've already outlined (my post) what I'd like to Ed Cone to do (this applies to the N&R's John Robinson too). That would be to ADMIT that I exist (instead of ignore/ban/delink me) . . . ADMIT that I suffered horrific professional and personal insults (right under their high & mighty journalists' noses) for doing the right thing . . . ADMIT that (as healthcare scandal after scandal rolls out of Raleigh) that my story is indeed "relevant" to (and sheds much light on) WHY these scandals happen and WHY people within the system do not blow whistles . . . and ADMIT that the evidence is THERE that two "non-profit" executives in Asheboro lied over and over and over again to serve their own greedy purposes (and seal of their acts of destruction against me).

PUT MY CASE FRONT AND CENTER in the blogs and in the newspapers. BRING IT TO THE ATTENTION OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC . . . the larger public that does not blog . . . the public that still (for reasons I cannot fathom) still trusts newspapers to be our watchdogs (as opposed to lapdogs) and report the facts and tell the truth.

Make no mistake. I want these two hospital administrators raked through the coals. I want them to suffer a small portion of the indignities & humiliation & hardship they inflicted upon me. I want them investigated & prosecuted, and their hospital sanctioned by the state - for the awful things they did to a young doctor just trying to her job.

It's not malice or revenge. It's righteous indignation because I was victimized by a CRIME.

And I damned sure want to make sure it does not happen to anyone else!

If perjury is an affront to the cornerstone of our legal system - if no one is truly about the law - then PROVE IT!

The ONLY way that is going to happen is by turning up the heat under the Randolph County DA (here's the story of the bad blood and conflicted interest that justifies my asking for a referral up the legal food chain) and/or NC Attorney General's seats (as happened in the Duke/Nifong case) . . . AND by lighting fires under the ivory towers of the Medical Board (and Medical Society) and the State Bar and NCDHHS and the NC Legislature - applying public pressure to do something/anything that would protect employed physicians and medical whistle-blowers from the kind retaliation I suffered.

If people within the system were not so deeply entrenched in the status-quo of corruption - if they felt safe in reporting problems - I daresay millions might not have been wasted in our latest very costly healthcare fiasco (mental health) and at least a few innocents caught in the medical crossfire might not have died.

What do you think?

It's simple, Sam. I'm here because I want light and air. I want to see our local newspapers & journalists do what they are supposed to do . . . instead of wink and nod and play suck-up to the "powers-that-be".

And if they don't do provide the light and air, it's what blogs (as our "alternative media") should be doing. "Citizen journalism" and all that blather.

The Courier Tribune is a lost cause. Corporate carpetbaggers, David and Bonnie Renfro might as well own my hometown - and Randolph Hospital CEO, Bob Morrison (my lying, cheating nemesis), is their best buddy. But if, as Editor of Asheboro's alternative daily newspaper, John Robinson would get his nose out of the Cone Healthcare System's butt (where it is clearly deeply buried) . . . and blogger-king Ed Cone would climb down off his morally-superior/nose-bent-out-of-shape high horse and use some of those family connections he likes to blog/reminisce about, what I'd like to see happen is NOT impossible at all.

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

I hear a whole lot of talk in the blogosphere about fixing healthcare. You don't do that by "looking forward" and skipping merrily along (literally over dead bodies) and ignoring the past - pretending it did not happen. You don't do that by wishing. You don't do it by spewing nothing but hot air and flowery rhetoric about "sunshine" and "community" and "open records" (which in my case were not open at all).

You don't do it by de-linking or banning or ignoring the people who are trying to tell you what is going on right under your nose. You don't do it by telling people who've been wronged and injured to just "get over it" and "move on".

If you're an "elite" GSO blogger, you STOP using Dr. Mary Johnson as your favorite (well, maybe second-favorite - I love my Bubba!) punching bag because she does not worship at the altars of Clinton, Easley and Edwards (under whose watches she suffered countless injuries and insults*). You start networking and forwarding her blog/story to other bloggers - other media outlets - larger venues. You put a blogging microscope (or proctoscope - at this point you'd probably get further) on John Robinson and David Renfro and their real motives for squashing her story.

(*I've heard a rumor that you don't worship at these altars either, Sam).

And if you call yourself a journalist, you do that by taking a long hard look at the past (dare I use the word "investigate"?), rolling up your sleeves and punching out the story. You MOVE THAT PEN/KEYBOARD to prompt ACTION that might spotlight and correct and rectify the mistakes (instead of waiting for more money to be wasted and more people to die).

I sincerely hope, Sam, that this adequately answers your question.