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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

I just don't know even what to say to this. That is absolutely devastating for the family. This story is absolutely insane. This sounds like something you'd read about in a third-world country in the 19th century.

The fact that he just kept doubling down and then even tried to cover it up is chilling. What is his deal? He just wants to play doctor? Does he get heavily paid for surgeries?

I see this on an 4 year old review:

> I truly believe, and have been told, it sounds like the outpatient surgery benefits him more monetarily than doing it during my 8 day hospital stay.

Perhaps this guy is just in it for the money and totally out of his league.

It makes you wonder why checks and balances failed to allow this guy to practice medicine and who wasn't speaking up or being listened to. It's pretty scary if there are doctor's like this out there.

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>This sounds like something you'd read about in a third-world country in the 19th century.

Not even then. Neither third world country doctors nor 19th century physicians would confuse the liver for the spleen.

The ancient Greeks knew the difference. They may not have known what the spleen itself did, but they knew it wasn't the liver

You sure? I've seen enough terrible "surgeons" in rural America that'd rip out a liver all day long that washed out of their residency programs after "moving to Canada" and washing out of a crappy Vancouver hospital.

And there ain't no "kindly revert" when you pull the wrong organ.

Curious - does Vancouver have an especially bad reputation for medicine, or did you pick the city/country arbitrarily?

Canada's medical training program seems to me to be reasonably rigorous; as an outsider it doesn't seem worse than a typical American medical program. Unfortunately it also suffers from severe (artificial!) shortages of doctors.

How else do the third world country washout doctors end up in a rural clinic in nowhere America and end up with the Vancouver accent?

Residency on the West coast in Canada. Always.

It’s unfortunately the case in 21st century in unexpected places with systemic issues and it can get worse — e.g. repeated surgeries under influence, etc.

I have to assume some kind of dementia or mental instability on the part of the surgeon. Nobody in his right mind would behave this way.

I've seen suspicion and wondered myself if the guy is even who he says he is. He might not even be an actual surgeon. Apparently, he's killed at least two other people in similar cases.

As if this guy being a surgeon isn't scary enough, what's more scary is that the system allowed him to be practicing, allowed this surgery to happen (he was an hour late and the assigned staff had went home).

I almost wouldn't be surprised if he's an imposter, under the influence, and has some mental generation or instability _all at once_. That's about the only thing that would explain this. But it still doesn't explain away the systemic issues.

To examine why, a thought experiement:

Scenes: The doctor in his office, The consultation. The surgery.

We have a carousel of sound tracks. What kind of movie soundtrack fits best?

What's the difference between cutting out someone's liver in a garage or shed or car vs. doing it in an operating room?

In 2020, a mere 2 months before all the lockdowns, I was being wheeled in for an inguinal hernia repair. I was deeply engaged in chit-chat with the nurses and surgeon, and I had been listening to "Weird Al" Yankovic a lot, because he had released a song and video called "Living with a Hernia".

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Ow1nlafOg&si=R3m4K3kDQiC...

I asked them if they were familiar with "Weird Al" and they said no, so I began singing a few bars of "Like a Surgeon" and they were mildly amused. That continued right up until they put the anaesthesia mask on my face.

The surgery was a great success!

This is, unfortunately, how narcissists behave. It's simply impossible for a narcissist to be wrong. They truly believe themselves to be right, all the time, and will even distort reality around them to "make" it true. And they do it all unconsciously.

This is probably more of a sociopath case than a narcissist. Narcissism does not equal lack of compassion.

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