Unlike NCDHHS, I Answer E-Mails: "I Was Young And Stupid And Terrified"

I heard from a former parent/patient today. She just found my blog and was floored by what she read (please note I've been blogging three years - ever since John Robinson first floated the total lie of citizen journalism - but hey, my story is not relevant to any of the ugliness going down in medicine these days). She had no idea. She talked about her kids . . . and her relatives' kids . . . and how, even now, she missed me. She spoke of the rumor and innuendo that floated around my abrupt & unexplained departure from Randolph Medical Associates . . . and how she tried to find me after I left.

Of course, I've already spoken to the reasons for all the rumor & innuendo here.

Unlike NCDHHS & state officials, I tend to respond to e-mails. I fired off one immediately:

Thank you. And yes, it was/is total BS.

When this went town, the lid was clamped down hard. In the first six months, if I had said anything I would have been fired "for cause" (for bringing ill will to Randolph) and lost my house. I was young and stupid and terrified.

I'm not any of those things anymore.

I hear from folks/former patients & parents all the time who had no idea what happened . . . because this hospital flat-out lied to everyone. And the Courier Tribune covered their tail.

And FYI, I begged for help/support from the doctors at White Oak (as I had helped them with bad babies on a number of occasions). Quite frankly, they were delighted that I/Laurie would not be around to compete - and they scarfed up a lot of my/our patients. Jim Kinlaw sits on the hospital's BOD and could have stopped this mess when it started. He knew what had happened was wrong. But he did not lift a finger (he was my own doctor when I was a kid - and took care of my parents until they left in disgust).

So while I know people have to go somewhere, I've got no use for White Oak. They totally sold me out.

If you want to help now, you can. Please forward my blog to anyone and everyone you know - let parents at the daycares and schools and churches know about it. The only way to put pressure on the DA and the hospital at this point is by word of mouth.

And again, thanks. It's always a little balm for this wounded warrior's soul to hear from people like you:)

I have always felt especially wounded by the treatment doled out by the doctors at White Oak . . . or more accurately, the help I didn't get from people I considered friends. The sense of total abandonment cut like a knife through the sternum to the heart . . . especially when I had done nothing but help these guys whenever they called . . . over and over again.

My parents, especially my Mom, felt totally betrayed by Jim Kinlaw's determined & methodical indifference & apathy when it came to the total destruction of their daughter's life in Asheboro and her reputation.

But business is business, and the fact is that Kinlaw & company certainly got loads of it when Mary Johnson was run out of town on a rail.

Lately, I've heard a rumor (through the grapevine) that Kinlaw has brushed off my efforts to bring Bob Morrison and Steve Eblin to some kind of justice with the line, "Mary is a little wacky". If the rumor is true, it burns.

BECAUSE HE KNOWS BETTER.

So even as I acknowledge that it's a good practice with good doctors, and people in Asheboro (who want nothing to do with Randolph or RMA) have to go somewhere, there is always a twinge of resentment (I'm human, after all) when I hear from patients who turned to White Oak.

Those parents/patients, like me, were never really given a choice.

Obviously, I'm not keeping my opinions to myself anymore.

But I figure I earned them.

3/9 Update: I slept on this one. And I woke up with something to add. It's already up . . . somewhere else on this blog . . . back when I was so careful not to name names. But those days are gone.

When the Randolph Hospital BOD voted to sue me for "libel", Jim Kinlaw, M.D. opted to sit the vote out - citing his "relationship" with my parents as a "conflict-of-interest" (there are so many places I could go with that today, but I won't).

My parents and I did not appreciate the sentiment in that it was our opinion that his personal/professional "relationship" with them -and with me - should have compelled him to SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE LAWSUIT . . . and tell the Board, as a physician, that it was not in the best interest of anyone to listen to the lawyers (who were pushing a legal bully tactic that they thought would "destroy" me financially) and direct another act of malice against a doctor they had already deeply wronged.

As a physician, Jim Kinlaw did not have the wisdom or foresight to tell the Board that taking this kind of step would do nothing but hurt everyone in its wake.

As an "honorable" businessman in the community, Dr. Kinlaw did not have the courage to say to this Board (legally responsible for everything their executives do), "Look fellas, our people went too far with this one and we know it. We need to take steps to fix it."

Instead he let "the suits" have their fun.

Their executives went on to lie under Oath in the discovery responses of their own "libel" lawsuit (which they eventually had to tuck tail and run from). Nothing got fixed. The Randolph Hospital BOD has continued to pretend their executives did not do these horrible/despicable things to a good physician, and here we are.

As a young professional "nobody" in public service, I took on a Cone physician who screwed up and was pummeled for it. Now, a decade later, we have Randolph Hospital fronting a cancer center for Cone Hospital. Randolph Hospital's CEO (Bob Morrison - the man who professionally gutted me) is currently fronting the annexation (translation: alcochol) battle for the City of Asheboro. My neighborhood has not even been annexed yet, and Morrison's efforts have already been rewarded with $1,000,000 of city/county taxpayer dollars (money we really could not spare) given to Cone's cancer center (without so much as a public vote). The local newspapers suck it all up (along with the advertising dollars) and play along.

Wanna talk to me some more about "conflict-of-interest", Dr. Kinlaw?

On the legal front, FIVE YEARS AGO our local DA (Garland Yates) was gift-wrapped a case too-hot-to-locally-handle . . . irrefutable black & white evidence for perjury, contempt and fraud committed by local "non-profit" officials (and, as we see from the above paragraph, "most-favored" players on the Asheboro scene).

Here's the thing about that. If Garland sends the case out/up to the NC Attorney General's office he KNOWS some prominent heads are ulitmately gonna roll . . . and that's not going to look good for all of Bonnie Renfro's grand economic development plans (that promininently feature Randolph Hospital). It won't look good for her husband (David Renfro) either . . . the publisher of the newspaper who stars in Bob Morrison's ads. After all, Garland's "got to live in this town" - just like our NC Rep, Harold Brubaker (who like Debbie Crane's bosses deletes e-mails instead of answering them).

Never mind that until they do their jobs, Dr. Mary Johnson can't live in this town. Wink. Nod.

Meanwhile, in the local blogs, Ed Cone of those same Cones doesn't think Mary Johnson's cause is a worthy journalistic pursuit.

I am tired of paying for the mistakes of the "honorables" on the Randolph Hospital Board of Directors . . . while everybody else skips smugly & merrily along with their "perfect" lives. And this story is RELEVANT to a lot of things going on in Asheboro and in medicine RIGHT NOW.

John Robinson (the Greensboro N&R), David Renfro (the Courier Tribune), Garland Yates (Randolph County DA), Roy Cooper (NC Attorney General and lawyer for NCDHHS), and Ed Cone (GSO Blogger-King) need to put that in their bully pulpits and smoke it.

P.S. (MeB) Tell me again who my "enemies" are.

Any time Ed/JR want to debate or discuss ANY of this, they are welcome to visit/comment on this blog.