Doctors Being Dumb #2: 07-31-2010

Full article: "Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac Dies in Chimney After Getting Stuck While Stalking Boyfriend"

Summary: First of all, it's good to be posting on this blog again. I had to take a bit of a break for health reasons, and it's been way too long since I've added anything here. Trust me though ... not posting hurt me more than it hurt you. So let's get started, shall we?

The article posted is itself a pretty humorous summary of what happened, but if you haven't heard the news, it's really not funny at all. Earlier this year (very late August to very early September), this was one of the stories that started making rounds throughout the internet. The basic story goes like this: the doctor involved, Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac, had a pretty dramatic, on-again-off-again relationship with her boyfriend. I have no idea how things got to the point that they did on the night in question, but whatever it was, Dr. Kotarac decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to confront her ex-boyfriend-or-whatever at his house.

Ex-boyfriend-or-whatever was probably thinking that he didn't want to deal with Dr. Kotarac's bullshit that night, so he snuck out of his house and went over to a friend's to spend the night. (Apparently, he was going to Europe the next day, which will become relevant later on in this story.) In the meantime, Dr. Kotarac decided that the best next course of action would be to try to break into Ex-boyfriend-or-whatever's house ... with a freaking shovel. This leads me to two obvious questions:

1. Where the hell did she get the shovel? Did she just carry it with her at all times for these kinds of occasions?
2. How did she fail at getting into a house with a goddamned shovel? Was it made of fucking plastic?

In any case, somehow, the shovel idea didn't pan out. So naturally, she opted for the obvious Plan B: climbing up onto the roof by using a ladder, removing the chimney cap, and trying to slide down the chimney like a goddamn Mrs. Santa Claus.

And if you ever needed proof that Santa Claus doesn't exist, this is it, folks. Dr. Kotarac got stuck in the chimney and died of asphyxiation. In fact, the only way that that her body was discovered was that Ex-boyfriend-or-whatever had hired a house sitter to feed his fish while he was away in Europe, so, three days after the poor woman died, the stench of decomposing flesh is what lead the house sitter to discover her body.

It took firefighters five hours to take apart the chimney and get Dr. Kotarac's body out.

Now, I'm not saying that Dr. Kotarac was a stupid lady - I would actually argue the opposite. For example, if you do a vitals.com search for her, you'll find that she went to UCLA for medical school, and did her residency in Cedars-Sinai. Clearly, it takes a lot of intelligence, drive, and skill to be able to succeed at places like those. But, even though I'm not qualified at all to diagnose Dr. Kotarac, it's pretty clear to me that Dr. Kotarac had some sort of psychiatric condition going on. It's a given that med school can drive people to their breaking point - believe me, I've been there. And I have to wonder, did the stress of medical school contribute to whatever was going on with her? Or did she succeed in medical school because of whatever her psychiatric condition was - something that created her to be driven beyond what normal people ought to be?

And what the hell does that say about how healthy medical school is for our psyches, anyway?

Best quotation: Alas Kotarac, while plenty smart being a doctor and all, is not all that schooled in the art of home construction or Christmas myths. Santa, as it turns out, would have difficulty making it down a chimney due to modern construction techniques, which dictate that chimneys aren't big enough for a human to slide comfortably down.

P.S.: Sorry if this post wasn't as humorous as the previous ones have been. I'll do better next time.

Doctors Being Dumb #1: 06-14-2009

Full Article: "Oxford graduate dies after being injected by experimental drug by sister"

Summary: I like to complain a lot about the different hoops that medical schools put their students through, mostly because the entirety of the process to get trained as a physician (both medical school and residency) is so long and painful. No other time in my life have I been so completely surrounded by people who have such little regard for actually doing an adequate job of teaching their pupils, and are instead entirely focused on protecting their own fragile egos. However, I'll be the first to admit that these hoops that they make us jump through do contain a few worthwhile lessons that can serve to make us better doctors than we'd be otherwise. "Don't inject your sister with an experimental serum that hasn't been properly tested or evaluated by it's manufacturers for fear of causing a life-threatening adverse drug reaction" is one such lesson, and is usually imparted to medical students during their first 24 hours of their medical school careers.

Apparently, Dr. Yvonne Pambakian was asleep when that lesson was being taught, as she injected an experimental drug into herself, her sister, their mother, and just for kicks, a random terminally ill woman. Researchers were developing the drug to treat diabetes and cancer, but were also hoping that the drug would have anti-aging properties as well. Both Dr. Pambakian and her sister (Mrs. Yolanda Cox) worked for the pharmaceutical company that was developing the drug, which had been set up by the only person stupid enough to think that these women were qualified to have access to experimental medications - their mother, one of the abovementioned women who allowed herself to be injected with the serum.

While Dr. Pambakian, her mother, and the random terminally ill woman did not have any adverse reactions from the medication, Mrs. Cox was not so lucky. She went into some kind of cardiopulmonary arrest after receiving the injection, and was taken by ambulance to a local hospital where she was put on mechanical ventilation. However, neurological testing showed that her brain was irreversibly damaged, and her family elected to have her life support machine turned off.

Now, I might be able to understand your willingness to inject your sister with such a drug if she was 75 and had a whole host of age-related health issues. Heck, I might even understand if your sister was 50 and a few age-related health issues. But, I'm going to have to question your sanity when you decide that it's a good idea to give such a drug to your 24 year old sister - which is exactly how old Mrs. Cox was. I'm not sure what age Mrs. Cox was hoping to achieve, but I'd have to guess that it falls somewhere squarely in the prepubescent range, since clearly that's the level of maturity that she reached in her 24 years on earth.

Hopefully, the negative press from this event will cause the company to self-implode and bankrupt this family, so that they can't breed any more children to further bring down the fitness of the human race.

Best Quotation: "Both sisters worked for a pharmaceutical company, Amro Biotech, set up by their mother, Dr Arpi Matossian-Rogers."