Doctors have often been seen as some of the smartest members of society, and with good reason. It takes years of training, constant retraining, and a lot more than just book smarts to be a good doctor. But they are still human, and humans are fallible. Mistakes are made every day, and while some of them can be insignificant, others can completely change lives. Suing doctors for less-than-perfect practice is becoming more and more common, the morality of which is debatable. If you need help, and only certain people are able (and often, legally obliged) to help you, is it really fair to blame them if their best isn’t good enough? In many cases on the other hand, it is clear if a patient suffered because somebody was careless. Below are ten examples of some of the most cringe-inducing medical malpractices of recent years.

Going in for brain surgery is worrying enough for most patients, but those in Rhode Island Hospital could be forgiven for being more worried than most. Despite being the most prestigious hospital of the state, and a teaching hospital for students of Brown University, the hospital made the basic yet tremendous mistake of operating on the wrong side of a patient’s brain. Three times in one year.

The first incident was the result of a third-year resident failing to mark which side of the brain was to be operated on. The doctor and nurse in this operation claimed they were not trained in how to use a checklist, although one must ask how many people would allow their heads to be cut open by someone who has clearly never received professional training in the fine art of grocery shopping.

In the second incident, a different doctor (with over 20 years experience) never filled out which side of an 86 year old man’s brain had a blood clot, assuring the nurse that he remembered. The patient in this case died a few weeks later.

In the third case, the chief resident neurosurgeon and a nurse both clarified which side of the brain was to be operated on beforehand, and then proceeded to operate on the other side. All three cases involved different doctors, but whether it’s better to be in a hospital where one doctor repeats a mistake multiple times, or several doctors make the same mistake is debatable.

Alexander Baez is a former Mr. Mexico and a runner-up Mr. Universe. Being a bodybuilder, he is, unsurprisingly, concerned with his physique, and in 1999 he decided he wanted to get pec implants. When he awoke from his surgery, he discovered that while he had been given implants, he was actually given breast implants (C-cups), and not pec implants. Police in Florida began a search for Reinaldo Silvestre, a man who had posed as a doctor and had no legitimate medical credentials. Silvestre had forged documents and had also operated on at least two women in Florida, using kitchen utensils. In 2004, Silvestre was found in working in Belize, where he is believed to have treated hundreds of patients over at least a one year period.

Carol Weihrer had long suffered pain in her right eye, and at the advice of her doctor, decided her quality of life would be improved if she had the eye removed. The surgery was five and a half hours long, and for about two of those hours, Carol was awake. She explained that anesthesia is made up of two different elements, one to paralyze the patient, and one to put them to sleep. Unfortunately, only the paralyzing agent worked fully in her case, and halfway through the operation, she woke up but could not move at all. She was horrified to hear the surgeon listening to disco music throughout, as well as having to hear things like “Cut deeper, pull harder”. Carol was awake for the exact moment they removed the eye. Eventually, the doctor realized she was conscious, and the administered more of the nerve-blocking anesthesia, which Carol described made her insides feel like “being roasted on a barbecue pit”. She was so traumatized by the ordeal that she has slept in a reclining chair since, too afraid to lie down. Cases like these are known as Anesthesia Awareness, and it is estimated that up to 42,000 people in the US alone experience it every year.

Never having been in for any sort of surgery in my life (and after writing this, hoping I never will be), I can only imagine the worries people have beforehand: how skilled is the surgeon, what if they cut something they shouldn’t and so on. I also think it’s safe to assume that “What if I catch on fire?” isn’t a common concern among patients. But perhaps it should be. In 2009 Janice McCall, 65, died six days after she caught fire during surgery. While the cause of the fire was not released in this case, there are a number of other examples to that can explain possible causes to igniting in surgery: In 2012, Enrique Ruiz suffered second-degree burns after an electronic scalpel caused his oxygen supply to explode, which the hospital then tried to cover up.

In another case, Catherine Reuter, 74, suffered second and third-degree burns after a cauterizing tool caused the alcohol based disinfectant on her face to catch fire. The incident led to strong infections, kidney failure, and long-term sedation. Reuter never fully recovered, and died in hospital two years later. It is estimated that surgical fires affect up to 650 patients a year.

It’s likely that everyone reading this will have heard stories about people who get operations and later find out that they had foreign objects stitched inside them. There are about 1,500 such reports every year in the US. While uncommon, such an occurrence can be extremely painful, and can lead to other complications such as infection or internal bleeding. What sets Daryoush Mazarei out from other examples is not the fact that the item left behind inside his chest, a retractor, was 10 inches long, nor that it could physically be seen poking out. It is that when he went back to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre, he was told he should seek psychiatric care. After a month of agonizing pain, multiple complaints, and repeatedly being told the problem was in his head, Marazei was finally given a CT scan, and the item was removed. He has begun legal proceedings against the hospital.

Jesica Santillan was a 17 year old girl who died 15 days after receiving a heart and double-lung transplant. Undoubtedly, this was a major operation and any number of things could have gone wrong. The whole thing could have even gone perfectly, but failed if Jesica’s body rejected the new organs. While her body did reject the organs, it was not simply a case of bad luck. With such long waiting lists for organs in the US, you would think that the professionals in Duke University Hospital would make sure that the organs they intend to transplant are the same blood type as the person they’re going into. Unfortunately, Jesica was blood type O, and received organs from someone that was blood type A, something over a dozen people were supposed to check, but didn’t. The hospital hid the mistake for 11 days, and then went public looking for another donor. She received a second transplant two weeks after the first one, but was declared brain dead and taken off life support. Her mother believes that she was weaned off her medication so she would seemingly pass away naturally.

Only people who have actually seen it for themselves can really know how easy it is to look at something like a pair of kidneys and tell which one is healthy and which is not. Apparently, it’s not as clear a difference as you might think. In 2000, 70 year old Graham Reeves of Wales died after not one, but two surgeons removed the wrong kidney. This sort of error is not an isolated incident, nor is it confined to any one body part. Benjamin Houghton, an Air Force veteran, received $200,000 compensation after doctors removed the wrong testicle, while Willie King, who suffered from diabetes, received a total of $1.15 million after his right leg was amputated by mistake (with the correct leg being amputated later).

Kim Tutt was getting her jaw x-rayed at the dentist, when they noticed a large lump on the left side of her jaw. After undergoing further examinations, she was told she had 3-6 months to live. The doctors told her she could possibly get an extra three months if they removed the left side of her chin, right up to her ear, and replaced it with her fibula. Desperate to spend more time with her 10 and 12 year old sons, she underwent the procedure. The lump was removed, and although slightly disfigured, Tutt was grateful to have extra time with her sons. Three months later, she was called to the doctors office, who gave her the good news that she was cancer free. The bad news was that she had in fact never had cancer at all. There had been a mix up in the lab, and Kim Tutt had gone through five surgeries and been left disfigured for nothing.

Medical malpractice is not limited to surgery, and the case of Paul Lozano illustrates this better than any other example. Lozano had been sexually abused by his mother as a child, and his psychiatrist, Margaret Bean-Bayog, decided to try a form of therapy known as “reparenting”, where the psychiatrist simulates the different stages of lifespan development in an attempt to “reprogram” the patient. She coddled him, read him stories, called him “baby”, made him call her “mother”, and made him learn cue-cards off by heart. One such card read “I’m your mom and I love you and you love me very much. Say that 10 times”. Other cards were more sexual, and more notes were found that appeared to be erotica featuring Lozano and his doctor. It was also reported that they did in fact have sexual relations. After about five years, he committed suicide.

Some of the examples mentioned so far were a result of poor communication, while others can be attributed to bad practice. Depending on who and what you believe, it can be argued that both of these are present in the case of Bryan Mejia, but what sets it apart from the others is the ethical debate that it sparked. Bryan was born with only one leg, and no arms. The deformity is obviously not the fault of the medical staff at Palm Beaches, but parents Ana Mejia and Rodolfo Santana have accused the staff of negligence for not properly detecting this through ultrasounds, saying they would have aborted their son if they had known he would only have one limb. Most people would expect that a doctor would be able to alert the parents-to-be of such a disability, but Dr. Morel, the defendant, argued that he is not to blame. The couple, who feared the child may be born with down-syndrome, opted not to undergo amniocentesis after they were told there was a 99.9% chance that the child would not have any form of mental disability. This test would have detected the missing limbs, but there was a 1 in 500 chance that it could result in a miscarriage, and Morel argued that it was their decision, and he cannot be blamed. But according to the lawyer representing the couple, the second ultrasound given to them shows all four limbs intact, suggesting they were given false evidence.

The couple was awarded $4.5 million, to help Bryan have a good life, and stated that none of this was compensation for their mental anguish. But many people see this as the couple suing the hospital because they had a disabled child. This, the fact that the couple say they would have aborted their son, and the accusations of malpractice, all caused widespread outrage and debate.

Whether it’s for your annual checkup or a major surgery, seeking medical attention can be a scary thing. You may feel sick, you might be afraid of needles, or you could just be dreading the big bill at the end. But like it or not, we all have to do it. Even if it’s scary, most people tend to trust their doctors, hoping they will first do no harm. But in some cases, the doctors do harm. A lot of harm.

10 Seventh Time Unlucky

The first successful organ transplant was a kidney transplant between twins that took place in Boston in 1954. Since then, medical science has made tremendous advances in this field, but organ transplantation remains a very complex procedure. The organs need to be harvested almost immediately upon death, implanted successfully, and then accepted by their new hosts. The process remains risky, and with long waiting lists for organs all over the world, there’s no room for mistakes.

In 2015, Wales introduced its opt-out system, meaning that everyone in the country is an organ donor unless they specifically take themselves off the list. In the first six months after this was implemented, over 50 percent of donations came from people who had neither opted in nor out, showing huge promise for the future of organ donation.

This was, in part, a response to an incident that had taken place two years earlier in which two men were killed by a botched transplant. The victims were not donor and recipient, however. Instead, both men had received kidneys harvested from a homeless, alcoholic man.^[1]

The University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, was told that two kidneys were available from a man whose exact cause of death was unknown and that they were in “poor” condition. The organs had already been rejected by Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield.

But while most people would see these facts as red flags, the surgeons in Cardiff saw them as an opportunity and took the organs, all the while withholding the fact that the donor had meningitis. Turns out the donor’s meningitis and death were caused by a rare, parasitic kidney worm that has only been observed five times before.

The rarity of the parasite might make it seem like they could never have seen it coming. But the first six hospitals certainly did. The surgeon involved did apologize, however, saying, “Hindsight is a great thing.”

9 Quaid Twins

Being hospitalized can be a frightening experience, even if the cause is not particularly scary or life-threatening. Having your children hospitalized is even scarier, especially when they are newborns. And while there is always the chance that things could take a turn for the worse, the one thing you can always count on is that the hospital will keep you updated, even if they need to deliver the dreaded 3:00 AM phone call. Unless you’re Dennis Quaid.

“They’re fine. They’re just fine.” That was the response given to the famous actor when he called the equally famous Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.

In reality, the medical staff was rushing around manically on the other end of the phone trying to save his newborn twins, who had been readmitted to the hospital after contracting a small infection. Trusting the staff at one of America’s most reputable hospitals, Quaid went to bed. He only found out the truth when he went to visit his twins at 6:30 AM the next day.

Quaid’s twins, Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, had accidentally been given 1,000 times the recommended dose of heparin, a blood thinner that was causing them to bleed profusely. Without telling the parents, the hospital staff made unilateral and nonconsensual decisions to reverse the effects of the overdoses.^[2]

Not only did this remove any say the parents would have had in their children’s health care, it could have robbed them of their last few hours with their children. The kids were black-and-blue when their parents finally saw them. At one point, blood squirted from Thomas as far as 1.5 meters (5 ft) away.

Fortunately, both twins survived the ordeal. The mistake was traced back to the pharmacy technicians, who had mixed vials filled with 10,000 units per milliliter alongside those filled with 10 units per milliliter. The nurse also admitted that she didn’t check the vials before administering the drug.

As if that wasn’t enough, it only took two days for a member of the staff to leak the story to TMZ. This created a whirlpool of press pondering whether the twins were going to die, which would have only added to the trauma of the situation.

8 In The Wake

Anesthesia awareness is when a patient is perfectly conscious but unable to move during surgery. It is believed to affect about 0.1–0.2 percent of all surgery patients in the US, which is the kind of statistic that sounds both very low and far too high at the same time. In real numbers, it’s about 20,000–40,000 people a year.

Anesthesia awareness occurs because two different types of anesthesia are used in surgery, one to disable the body’s movement and one to put you to sleep. When the second one fails, you’re left trapped—seeing, hearing, and feeling everything but unable to move or make a sound.

This is what happened to 73-year-old Sherman Sizemore when he went in for exploratory surgery in 2006. It was a full 16 minutes before the anesthesiologist remembered to administer the drug to render Sizemore unconscious, meaning he felt a full 16 minutes of surgery.^[3]

But Sizemore was never told this happened and couldn’t figure out if he was having memories or nightmares of the event. For weeks afterward, Sizemore was convinced that people were trying to bury him alive. Eventually, the mental anguish became too much and he committed suicide. Had he been told the truth, Sizemore would have been more likely to cope and seek help. But he was lied to and became the first known victim of anesthesia awareness to commit suicide.

7 Burning Sensation

Even if you practice safe sex, there is always a risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI). One of the most pervasive STIs in the world is human papillomavirus (HPV). The reason: Even with a condom, HPV can be spread by skin contact of the surrounding area even if the carrier is showing no symptoms. Though a vaccine exists, relatively few people get it. This is why most sexually active people will contract it at some stage, whether they realize or not.

One of the biggest risks with HPV is that it could lead to cancer. So when Kim Morrison tested positive for the virus, doctors decided to test her husband, William, as well. When men are tested for HPV, the suspect region is covered in acetic acid, the same solution used in ear drops.

Although this is usually limited to a solution of around 3–5 percent acid, Mr. Morrison was given a whopping 72 percent by registered nurse Lisa Parsons. Fortunately, the acid did not burn any part of Mr. Morrison into nonexistence, but it did cause “severe pain, chemical burns, and long-term physical and psychological injuries.”^[4]

You may be cringing in horror right now, but 80 percent of sexually active people have this virus. Most show no symptoms.

6 Structurally Inadequate

In 1983, Cheryl Sexton Dillon was told she would need a hysterectomy. In reality, she only needed surgery on her bladder. But as we will see, Dr. James C. Burt (aka the “love doctor”) was not a man who could be trusted. It is not this lie that has earned him a spot on this list, but instead, his ulterior motive for telling it.

Burt was perfectly qualified when it came to performing surgery and could have carried out the bladder surgery or hysterectomy with ease—if either of those things had been his goal. But, as seen in his 1975 book, Burt believed that women were “structurally inadequate” for sex, a problem that he claimed could only be addressed with surgery.^[5]

So, throughout his career and without consent, Burt began reconstructing women’s vaginal canals while he was operating on them. In Cheryl’s case, Burt had repositioned her vagina and removed the clitoris (even though his alleged goal was to improve sexual satisfaction). Cheryl described the pain as excruciating, saying that she couldn’t sit or wear trousers without pain anymore.

When she was still in pain several weeks later, Cheryl sought a second opinion. Some of the words medical professionals used to describe her state included “mutilated,” “filleted,” and like “African tribes.” Cheryl had three corrective surgeries, but the damage was done and affects her to this day. Her marriage of 12 years fell apart.

Although Burt did have his medical license revoked in the late 1980s, he was never charged and the hospital settled out of court.

5 Group Therapy

Medical malpractice isn’t just limited to the treatment of the body. It can also relate to the treatment of the mind. In the case of Nadean Cool, her multiple personality diagnosis made her very susceptible to the undue influence of Dr. Kenneth Olson, her psychiatrist.

Olson correctly diagnosed Cool’s personality disorder, which was a good start. In fact, he actually diagnosed her with 120 distinct personalities, including some familiar faces such as the Devil and a duck. Whether there really were 120 personalities remains unclear, although it is unlikely.

Nevertheless, Olson found the situation to be a handy way to charge Cool for group therapy instead of one-on-one, raking in $300,000 with this little clerical change. During these sessions, which lasted for six years, he is alleged to have implanted false memories in his patient. These included memories of an abortion, childhood sexual abuse, and being pushed into a grave. Cool was left with traumatizing flashbacks, which she knew were fake, but they felt real enough to terrify her.^[6]

Cool eventually sued Olson as well as the hospital where she was treated, which supposedly allowed Olson to perform an exorcism on her. The suit was settled in 1997 for $2.4 million.

4 Unassisted Dying Facility

The decision to put a member of the family in an assisted living facility is one that weighs heavily upon the minds of those forced to make it. While it can feel like a cold move, it is often the best thing for the person, particularly if you are unable to afford or provide adequate care at home. This was the decision that Lydia Scherrer was forced to make after her husband, Earl, sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car crash at age 26.

Earl spent the next 16 months in a coma. After he woke up, Lydia continued to work but devoted her free time to rehabilitating him. She helped him to regain the power of speech and stimulated his mind with elementary school textbooks. For 10 years, Lydia was the inspiring, relentless, devoted, and loving wife you only read about in books that people have typed with their eyes. This was brought to a sudden halt in 2006 when she decided to move him to a better facility with round-the-clock, comprehensive care.

After one month in the new facility, Earl vomited up a black substance and died in Lydia’s arms.^[7] Just how her husband went south so fast was mind-boggling—until they looked just slightly below the surface. According to the facility, they had been taking care of Earl. So much care, in fact, that his charts showed they were regularly caring for him on days he wasn’t even there. (Lydia could check him out for a day or two at a time.)

If you’re wondering how you can care for someone who isn’t there, the answer is quite obvious: Ask someone else who isn’t there to do it. When the facility was investigated, nobody could find the man “Raul” who was allegedly Earl’s primary caregiver. In fact, there was no Raul, just a trail of falsified documentation.

But it was not simply the lack of care that killed Earl. When the autopsy report came back, it found a plethora of man-made objects inside his stomach, including unopened ketchup packets, paper towels, plastic bags, and candy wrappers. Exactly how these items were ingested remains unclear, but the case did culminate in the largest payout against an assisted living facility in Arizona history. The courts awarded $11 million to Lydia in 2009.

3 Wrong Organ

We’ve spoken before about how simple mistakes have led to surgeons accidentally removing the wrong half of a pair of body parts. From eyes to legs and even testicles, there are more than a few examples of “my left or his left?” that have resulted in people losing not one, but two of their precious body parts. At least in those cases, you can see where the confusion was. Not in the case of Dr. Patrick M. McEnaney.

Dr. McEnaney was a respected surgeon from Milford, Massachusetts, who was due to remove a patient’s gallbladder in 2006. If you know anything about human biology, you may be wondering what McEnaney actually did take out since we only have one gallbladder.

Well, as gifted as his colleagues claim he is, McEnaney somehow mixed up the gallbladder with the kidney. If you’re unfamiliar with human biology, the kidney looks like a big, lopsided square, while the gallbladder looks like a small pear. Basically, anyone should be able to distinguish the two.

Milford Regional Medical Center and state officials responded by first withholding McEnaney’s name. But they were forced to reveal it when the doctor’s license was suspended.^[8] While that sounds like a good move, the state medical board also suspended that suspension and instead gave him five years’ probation.

McEnaney was allowed to continue to operate under supervision because his mistake was “serious” but “rare.” Fortunately, the 84-year-old woman he operated on made a full recovery.

2 Witch Doctor

Whether you’re seeking help for your mental or physical health, it is important to ensure that the person you see is a qualified professional. But the word “qualified” should not be equated to the word “professional” as Dr. Letitia Libman goes to show.

Libman was working as a qualified psychologist in Delnor-Community Hospital in Illinois until mid-2005 when she was hit by four different lawsuits alleging that she had been using witchcraft in her sessions. The first to come forward was Shelley Standau. Instead of receiving psychological help, she claimed that she received an education in a number of witch’s spells that would supposedly help her find happiness and achieve her dreams. When that didn’t work, Standau decided to sue for $1 million.

Deanna Whetstine, whose nerve damage left her living in chronic pain, was next to come forward. Rather than training Deanna to tune out the pain, Libman used a combination of psychic powers, tarot cards, love potions, and gun threats to treat her patient. At one point, Deanna even lived with Libman. These methods also failed to achieve effective and therapeutic results, which led Deanna to sue for $50,000.

Kathleen Carlson, the third victim, also sued for $50,000. She had approached Libman after the breakdown of her marriage. However, as much as Kathleen wanted closure for her marriage, she didn’t quite take to Libman’s idea of stealing the ex-husband’s DNA and using it to put a curse on him.^[9]

Kenneth Sutter, who also sued for $50,000, claims that Libman tried to convert him to Wicca, encouraging him to contact the dead and replace his medication with Native American herbs. Libman didn’t put up much of a defense. She resigned almost immediately, saying that she doubts “very highly” that she said those things. At the same time, she described herself as a spiritual eclectic who follows Native American beliefs.

1 Seeds Of Doubt

Usually used by individuals for a bit of lighthearted fun, DNA kits have become quite popular in the last few years. The thought of discovering that you might be 1 percent black or that you’re more Estonian than Irish is just innocent fun that usually won’t have a major impact on your life.

But when a woman named Carrie decided to try one of these kits, she got a lot more than she bargained for. As soon as the results came in, Carrie, who believed she was an only child, found out that she had at least eight half-siblings.

At the same time, two other women named Jacoba and Kristy had tracked each other down through a website that helps to match families with donors. After doing their own DNA tests, they also discovered a number of unexpected siblings.

It turns out that years before any of this, the parents of these people had all visited the fertility clinic of Dr. Donald Cline. He had promised each couple that the sperm they were receiving was fresh, from a young medical student, and would not be used more than three times.

In reality, the not-so-young Dr. Cline had been using his own sperm for at least eight years and, by his own admission, possibly as many as 50 different times.^[10] Cline admitted wrongdoing, although he said he was only trying to help people have children. He also said that he would never have done it if he had known how far DNA studies would advance in his lifetime.

Simon is neither a doctor nor a nurse but feels more qualified than many of the people on this list. Contact him on Twitter for unqualified advice.