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مسلسل Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story مترجم - Episode 1
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00:00Do you have a drug and alcohol problem, sir?
00:03No, man. Never have.
00:04I talked to a doctor who said that you were like a serial killer.
00:08I'll deal with that in a context of libel later.
00:13There's this inherent faith in doctors.
00:17Because if we can't trust our doctor, who can we trust?
00:22Christopher Dunch really believed that he was unstoppable.
00:27I thought I finally found someone that's going to be able to fix me.
00:32I can fix you was like the magic word. Boom, that's all I heard.
00:37He said to them, I can make you better.
00:42That makes what Christopher Dunch did so devious.
00:48He fooled everyone.
00:51Couldn't move my arms or my legs and I was decapitated.
00:54Decapitated.
00:55I was paralyzed totally on the right side.
00:59She bled to death.
01:05He was sociopathic, narcissistic, a madman.
01:14Have you ever been under the influence of cocaine while you were taking care of a patient?
01:18I take the fifth.
01:20He carried a lot of secrets.
01:23While I was pregnant, there was an affair going on.
01:26How many times did y'all have a date in the office?
01:28He probably tried to get together two times a week, maybe three.
01:33His life is really spinning out of control.
01:36How many people do you have to cripple?
01:38How many people do you have to kill?
01:40We just felt that we had the medical equivalent of a serial killer on our hands.
01:45I have nothing to hide.
01:47He thought he was God.
01:49He's a stone cold killer.
02:17He's a stone cold killer.
02:44I'm Jerry Summers, and Christopher Dunch was my best friend.
02:51We met summer before our junior high year.
02:56We were both football players.
02:59My first impression of Chris was a real smart, hardworking guy.
03:05That's just the way he was, the way he's wired.
03:09His family is really warm, loving family, very faith-based.
03:16Christopher Dunch couldn't have come from a more all-American family.
03:21He was the oldest of three.
03:24His dad did some missionary work.
03:26His mom was a schoolteacher.
03:28His parents were lovely people who doted on their son.
03:33When I first met Chris, we were 12, 13 years old.
03:37He seemed to have a typical Southern upbringing.
03:43We went to high school in Cordova, Tennessee, at Evangelical Christian School.
03:48All the football players kind of hung out together.
03:51Chris wasn't the most athletic guy, but he was so driven in football.
03:55If we were required to work out one time a day, he would be there twice.
03:59He was always wanting to do more than everybody else.
04:04He had a supreme confidence in his abilities.
04:08He wouldn't give up.
04:12If he wanted to learn a drill, he would just keep doing it over and over and over.
04:18And he believed in this philosophy that if you just work hard enough, you just keep practicing, you can overcome.
04:25Chris was like a straight-A student.
04:28You know, he worked very hard in school.
04:30But Chris was about Chris.
04:33He had a temper.
04:34I mean, he could snap pretty quick if you pushed him.
04:37You know, I saw him get mad several times at people.
04:40I don't think he cared as much about other people's feelings.
04:43He was a little bit of a loner, but he was confident because he was successful in the classroom, on
04:50the field, and with girls.
04:52And when you look at him, you think, that guy has a lot going on for him.
05:01Chris lived with my grandmother and I when he was in undergraduate school.
05:05He came home saying that he was going to be a doctor.
05:10And it did not surprise me in the least bit.
05:13He was going to get through medical school.
05:16That's just the way he was driven.
05:18On paper, he had perfect credentials.
05:21He definitely liked to boast about his own abilities.
05:24In his mind, he was never anything other than the best, the smartest.
05:31He trained in neurosurgery in Memphis at the University of Tennessee program.
05:35And he did a fellowship at the Sims-Murphy Spine Institute in Memphis.
05:42He wanted to be a neurosurgeon.
05:45Most people, they're either on the research side or they're on the medical side.
05:51And he wanted to cover both sides.
05:53And he did.
05:56Chris really believed he was probably going to cure cancer and save the world.
06:04In the story of Dunch's childhood, we want to point to some kind of smoking gun.
06:11But there was no reason to believe he was anything other than how he presented himself.
06:19I think that makes it scarier.
06:29I was working at the Gold Club on the night that I met Chris.
06:35He came in with his friend Jerry, and he had a whole table full of women.
06:40All the other girls were kind of fighting over that spot at the table.
06:44We had a night for a while where we would go to a strip club once a week.
06:51You could tell we were interested in each other.
06:54Another friend of mine kind of said, hey, let me introduce you to him.
06:57I was like, oh, he's a doctor, and he's charming, and he's handsome.
07:01And then we had a few drinks, and I went back to his house.
07:05I was swept off my feet.
07:07Chris was the dream guy everyone would tell you about in, like, the fairy tale.
07:11He pulled her out of the club.
07:13He saw her and wanted to save her.
07:15I guess he loved her.
07:17First, he was like, hey, let's go to Vegas, get married.
07:22He wanted me to think that everything was just picture perfect.
07:26But I got pregnant the first night that we slept together.
07:31And he was pissed.
07:34Eventually, we got past the rough patch.
07:36He seemed to be on board with my pregnancy.
07:40He said, I got a couple offers to go to either San Diego, Dallas, or New York.
07:46And I was like, well, I'm from Dallas.
07:47Let's just go.
07:51He said, wherever I go, are you going with me?
07:54Are you coming with me?
07:54I thought it sounded fun.
07:56Dallas sounded like a nice place to be.
08:00We moved into the W.
08:04Pulling up to the W, and the guy jumps out.
08:07Oh, Chris, Jerry, can I drive you tonight, Jerry?
08:10You need anything?
08:11You know, they're just kissing your ass, you know, left and right.
08:16Dunge, he was being paid a really big salary.
08:19And he, you know, had it made.
08:33Baylor Plano needed a neurosurgeon up there, so it fit perfect that he was going to go up
08:38there and start a career in neurosurgery.
08:41He told me that the doctors there were very prominent amongst the Dallas spine community.
08:49People were wanting him to come into their hospital, and they were lining up to come see him.
08:56First thing I heard about Dr. Dunge was that he was coming from a big, powerful program in
09:00Memphis, and he had a couple of PhDs, and he was supposed to be this hot shot surgeon.
09:06And they had plans to put him on a billboard.
09:10Christopher Dunge was going to be their new rising star neurosurgeon.
09:17The first time I met Dr. Dunge was in the operating suites at Baylor Plano.
09:22I was scrubbing on a case, and Dr. Dunge was close by scrubbing to go do one of his cases.
09:28The way that he introduced himself was fairly unusual.
09:33He stated that he was the best neurosurgeon in Dallas, and he was going to clean up all
09:38the spine work in Dallas.
09:40It was like going, who is this guy?
09:44Dr. Dunge rubbed people the wrong way right off the bat because he came in with these established
09:50neurosurgeons and spine surgeons in town saying none of them knew what the heck they were doing.
09:54There was a new sheriff in town named Christopher Dunge, and he was here to clean up Dallas.
10:07He was brought on board at Baylor, and they had all these great plans for him, and he started
10:13operating.
10:17The first surgery there was a man named Lee Passmore.
10:21He had had a previous surgery that apparently had failed, and he was still having a lot of pain.
10:27So we were going to go in and take out his L5-S1 disc, which is the simplest disc to
10:32take
10:32out from the front.
10:34The anterior approach to the spine is something that spine guys don't know how to do.
10:38They have to hire us to get to the spine from the front.
10:42The first time I met Dunge, basically introduced himself as God's gift to spine surgery in
10:48the state of Texas, that he had come to save all the patients in Texas from all this horrible,
10:56lousy spine surgery that was being done.
10:58And that kind of shocked me a little bit, and especially for a guy just out of his fellowship.
11:03I mean, you want a surgeon to be a little arrogant, to think highly of himself, but not that much.
11:10And at the same time, the guy's got two PhDs.
11:13He came from this big, powerful training program in Memphis.
11:16And so I thought, either he's all that, or he's full of shit.
11:22Just from his moves and what he was doing, I could tell he hadn't done this operation very
11:27much at all.
11:29So I started to try to tactfully walk him through it.
11:34What he was doing, it just didn't make a lot of sense to me.
11:37He had taken out the whole disc, and we started getting into all this bleeding.
11:41Got all this blood, I've got two suckers in the wound to control the blood.
11:45And I'm like, I can't see where the bleeding's coming from.
11:48And he's working blindly through the blood.
11:53I said, stop.
11:54Let me get control of this bleeding, and then I'll let you do whatever you want to do.
11:58He says, that's not necessary.
11:59I can feel it.
12:00And I'm like, no, no, no.
12:01You're not going to feel it.
12:02What you're doing is unsafe.
12:06And that's when I kind of lost it and said, no, you're going to let me get this, or I'm
12:10leaving right now.
12:13Could have heard a pin drop, because there was definitely some tension in that room.
12:18I mean, the guy couldn't operate.
12:19He was terrible.
12:20It was clear to me the guy was nuts.
12:34With Lee Passmore, Dunge did a few things wrong.
12:38He misaligned the cage.
12:42He also basically put a screw through a nerve.
12:47Even though that screw has been removed, he's got permanent damage to that nerve, and so
12:52he suffers constantly from pain.
13:00Lee's surgery was a complete botch, and Dunge would have known it.
13:11Pretty early on, while he was at Baylor Plano, things started going horribly wrong.
13:15The neurosurgical community is a pretty small community.
13:17They talk.
13:18They know each other.
13:20Word was already out that Dunge was a problem.
13:25I pretty much broadcast to the other surgeons I work with that I was never working with Dunge
13:29again.
13:32Dr. Hull and I were partners for 15 years.
13:35He's a close friend.
13:36When I got that call from Dr. Hull, I knew we had trouble.
13:41And he said, like, Randy, do not scrub with him.
13:45We need to shut him down, because he's a disaster.
13:51Dunge came to Dallas.
13:53He brought his best friend, Jerry Summers, with him.
13:56His girlfriend, Wendy Young, came with him.
13:59And they lived in this really nice house near Baylor Plano.
14:04I thought everything was going great.
14:06I thought that he was expanding his practice.
14:08He had ended up hiring a nurse practitioner, Kimberly Morgan.
14:15The first time I met Kimberly Morgan was at her home office.
14:20At that moment, I didn't think anything bad.
14:23I just know they spent a lot of time in his office.
14:28One night, they went out to this event, him and Kimberly.
14:31When they came home, back to our house, they were all very drunk.
14:37Chris fell on the ground, and Kimberly laid on top of Christopher at that point and kissed
14:41him, and I just felt my blood boil.
14:45That night was the night I realized that Kimberly was more than just his assistant.
14:48By the way, we started with some stuff.
15:20Will you tell me your full name, please?
15:22Kimberly Keen Morgan.
15:25What do you do for work?
15:26I'm a family nurse practitioner.
15:29You get introduced to Wendy Young in August of 2011?
15:32Yes, sir, as a secretary.
15:34She moved down here, and she was pregnant, and her husband would be moving down with her.
15:38And what were the lies that you concluded they were telling you about all of that?
15:44Um, he told me that she, in fact, was not the secretary, that she was actually someone
15:50he had dated, and then she became pregnant, and that that was his child.
15:55And he tried multiple times to get her to have an abortion.
16:19The day I went into labor with Aiden, Chris had to help the nurse on duty that day deliver
16:28my son.
16:29I thought he was going to pass out.
16:31I'm like, you know, I'm depending on you here to get me through this.
16:34I'm pushing.
16:35Nothing's coming.
16:36And finally, he slid right out.
16:38And he was like, oh, my gosh, he is a beautiful boy.
16:44I came home from the hospital, and they had moved all of my belongings out of my master
16:49bedroom into the guest bedroom.
16:52He was going to go back to what was calling him Kimberly.
17:04I love the anything outdoors, whether it's hiking, camping, skiing, anything outside was
17:14where I found my happy place.
17:19I originally injured my back because I was unloading trucks, and I got to where I couldn't
17:28even stand up.
17:29Yeah.
17:30It was difficult for him to walk.
17:32So I was going to pain management.
17:35The pain management handed me a card, and the name of the card was Christopher Dunch.
17:40He was supposed to be a rock star neurosurgeon, so we interviewed this Christopher Dunch.
17:48Yeah.
17:49Boy, was he amazing.
17:50He was very charming.
17:51He sounded amazing.
17:52He was.
17:54I can fix you was like the magic word.
17:56Boom, that's all I heard.
17:58I thought that he was going to be the man that could help me walk again.
18:04I remember talking to him prior to the surgery.
18:07There were no signs at all of anything being out of the ordinary.
18:12He seemed completely normal.
18:17There was a very prominent head and neck general surgeon at Baylor Plano by the name of Bob Steckler.
18:24And somehow, Dr. Dunch got a hold of him to do one of these access procedures, the ones
18:29that Hoyle and I were refusing to do.
18:32Dr. Steckler got on the phone and said, like, Randy, I don't know how to do this.
18:36Can you come in and help me do it?
18:38I said, yeah, I'll help you do it.
18:41I work with spine surgeons every single day.
18:44I see bad surgeons here, but there's nothing that comes close to the level of incompetence
18:50that Christopher Dunch exhibited.
18:53The case that was done on Barry Morguloff was a very routine case, one of the easiest
18:59things a neurosurgeon should be able to do.
19:04Dr. Dunch came in with his physician assistant and started gnawing away at the human spine.
19:15Floundering.
19:16I was just like, oh, he doesn't even know what he's doing.
19:19I couldn't believe it.
19:39I'm very reticent to start blasting away in front of the nursing staff at an incompetent
19:45colleague.
19:46And so I tried to soften everything up so that no one would panic.
19:50I started defining the parameters so that he could do it properly.
19:55Even after I defined the regional anatomy form, Dr. Dunch still couldn't do the case right.
20:04When I came out of surgery and woke up, they asked how I felt.
20:08I told them I felt like I got hit by a truck.
20:13Checked on Mr. Morguloff in the recovery room.
20:16Dr. Dunch ran past me.
20:18I said, are you going to re-image Mr. Morguloff?
20:20Because he looks like he's in more pain than he was before he came in.
20:25No.
20:27He wouldn't do it.
20:28Dunch comes out of every surgery saying it's a huge success.
20:31And he did that exact same thing with Barry.
20:33He was ignoring all of the things that Barry was saying.
20:36I'm in pain.
20:37I need some help.
20:38What happened here?
20:40We're first taught to do no harm.
20:42We have to take the Hippocratic Oath when we graduate from medical school.
20:46And you have to do everything humanly possible to do right for that patient.
20:51And he crossed the line very early in his career.
20:54Right away, I was having pain in my left leg.
20:57Like, everybody said, it's normal after surgery stuff.
21:01The pain will go away.
21:03It just got worse.
21:06I think what's disheartening is Dr. Dunch knew about Barry's past addiction history.
21:15He said, well, he's just fine.
21:17He's just over-exaggerating because that's what addicts do.
21:22And unfortunately, because he was a doctor, I believed him.
21:33We go because it's a follow-up visit, and I'm telling him about my pain.
21:38And Dr. Dunch was extremely inebriated.
21:43He was slurring his speech.
21:45His nurse had to take up for him and was explaining what he couldn't.
21:53And we were out of there.
21:55That was it.
21:56That was it.
21:57From the time he got to Dallas, there were certainly people who suspected that he was using drugs and alcohol.
22:03Were the signs ignored?
22:05It's certainly plausible that people were either rationalizing what they were seeing or just sweeping it under the rug.
22:20With that point in time, I went for a second opinion.
22:24The physician that looked at the x-ray told me it looked like a bomb had gone off in my
22:30back.
22:33And that was like an O-moment.
22:40With Barry, he left in bone fragments, just kind of loose in his body, touching his nerves.
22:46Dunge also left hardware.
22:51All that I wanted was the pain to stop.
22:54The only thing that makes the pain stop were meds, and you have to take them as prescribed.
23:02But as an addict, it's extremely difficult, so I had some issues.
23:06He'd fall asleep in the middle of eating.
23:09Not really be able to walk to bed.
23:11I was not doing well.
23:15I'm, you know, fighting depression.
23:19I went into a psychiatric facility to keep from killing myself.
23:30It was hard.
23:31It was hard.
23:37I couldn't do it.
23:38I tasted the barrel of the 9mm.
23:46And it was very hard to go on.
23:49But I had a wife and child.
23:54I had lost him.
23:56I'm angry because it completely changed our life.
24:04We just tried to get through the day.
24:08That's probably what has done the most damage to my family,
24:12is I don't have the ability any longer to get out and do the things that I used to do.
24:18Pain rules my life.
24:26I wrote a letter to the medical board, telling him the whole thing about what happened.
24:32This guy needed to be looked at.
24:35After the Morguloff case, I was outraged.
24:39Christopher Dunch can't do the simplest case in spine surgery.
24:44Baylor Plano is a very good hospital, and I had privileges there.
24:47And so I had some moral obligation to let the powers that be at that hospital know what was going
24:54on.
24:54And told them, you're going to have problems when he starts taking care of really sick people.
25:04Did personnel from Baylor ever ask you about Dr. Dunch?
25:08With regards to?
25:10Anything.
25:11Is he, what do you know?
25:13Is he doing drugs?
25:14Do you know anything about alcohol?
25:16Is he being weird?
25:17I mean, anything like that.
25:18No, sir.
25:19Never once?
25:20No, sir.
25:23According to the chief of surgery, even though he was not having great results, they weren't outrageously horrible.
25:30They didn't have enough material, they thought, to sanction him or restrict his privileges.
25:36And so he went on to operate on his friend, Jerry Summers.
25:41I had a bad neck.
25:43I slammed into the back of a car and I messed my neck up.
25:48I thought that it was a pretty routine surgery.
25:52If he did anybody's right, he'd do mine right.
25:59Dr. Dunch thought Mr. Summers had some diseased discs in his cervical spine.
26:04The idea was to take the diseased discs out, they were compressing the spinal cord, and put something in their
26:11place.
26:14The night before the surgery, probably only slept maybe four to five hours.
26:19I was anxious to get it fixed, of course, but I also was a little nervous about the surgery.
26:31I didn't know Christopher Dunch.
26:34I asked him, is there anything in particular I can provide for you for this surgery as your anesthesiologist?
26:45And he actually said, no, I could do this case with my eyes closed.
26:50Okay, another cocky surgeon.
26:52The surgery is proceeding and moving ahead.
26:57Kimberly Morgan was Dr. Dunch's first assistant during the procedure.
27:03The interactions between Kimberly Morgan and Christopher Dunch were interesting.
27:11The talk between the two was highly sexual.
27:16Christopher Dunch would ask for a drill and then comment how he wanted to drill her.
27:23This was the most sexually inappropriate conversation I've ever heard in an operating room.
27:34About two-thirds of the way through the case, I start hearing suctioning blood.
27:43And it's hooked up to a suction canister, which actually has a digital readout.
27:49I think it started off somewhere around 100 milliliters for the type of surgery that Jerry Summers had.
27:58The typical amount of blood we lose for the entire case may be 50 milliliters.
28:05And I'm watching the digital readout get higher and higher.
28:10I asked Christopher Dunch, is everything okay?
28:14And he said, yes, yes, everything is fine.
28:17But everything is clearly not fine.
28:21By the time he got it under control, we had lost about 1,200 milliliters.
28:28About a fifth of his blood volume.
28:33As soon as I woke up, I couldn't move my arms or my legs.
28:38It feels like a big pile of bricks is on your body and your head's sticking out.
28:45I knew something was wrong.
28:48You have minutes to hours to potentially reverse for the damage to not be permanent.
28:55If there's a window of time to do something, it's closing very, very fast.
29:04And I just remember laying in the bed.
29:07And I wanted to just go to sleep.
29:11Dr. Dunch went deeper than he should have.
29:14Jerry Summers was effectively decapitated during the operation.
29:34I remember dying.
29:36And I remember seeing a light.
29:41And I just remember everyone saying, open your eyes, open your eyes.
29:47I was decapitated.
29:54I mean, there was anger towards him at first.
29:57Yeah, I was definitely like, f***ing Chris.
29:59He had paralyzed me.
30:01And my family was there.
30:02And my friends were there.
30:05That was a horrific experience.
30:09I was fighting my own battle in the hospital.
30:15I actually went in to go see Jerry.
30:18I got, like, nauseated.
30:19I had to go in the bathroom, put water on my face, because it made me sick in my stomach
30:22to see him like that.
30:26I thought that I might see Chris.
30:28I thought maybe he would come check on Jerry, you know, one of his best friends.
30:32But no sight of him at all.
30:37All of the nurses and surgical techs are ready to go back in, but Dunch disappears.
30:41He goes into this other surgery and leaves Jerry Summers.
30:46The nursing staff was so disturbed by the conduct of the operation and Dr. Dunch's behavior and lack of urgency.
30:57The nursing supervisor was notified.
30:59The CEO was notified.
31:01Everybody knew about the case.
31:02Dr. Dunch, he turned his best friend into a quadriplegic.
31:07Mr. Summers is a young man.
31:10I mean, it was very disturbing to me and everybody else on staff there.
31:16Dr. Dunch is blaming all this bleeding on the anesthesiologist for doing a rough intubation, which is just total fantasy.
31:28Dr. Dunch made another comment.
31:30I was told that he blamed me.
31:34Saying, I made him a quadriplegic by intubating him.
31:38The way that I managed him from an anesthetic standpoint is above and beyond caution.
31:46This guy had basically butchered Jerry Summers' spinal cord.
31:53Chris, like I said, he was a big talker.
31:55If something was to go wrong, he could talk you into thinking it wasn't wrong, that it wasn't his fault.
32:01You know, sad situation all around.
32:03It makes me sick every time I think about it, you know.
32:09Jerry Summers was parked in the ICU, still quadriplegic.
32:13His neck was so unstable, when the nursing staff tried to move him, his heart rate would go down to
32:19like 10.
32:21He flatlined three times in a 24-hour period.
32:25I really did not think he was going to make it out of the hospital.
32:30I was on my back.
32:32I hear that beeping over and over and over again.
32:38They're pumping you full of drugs, trying to get you to sleep.
32:43And I didn't sleep day after day after day after day after day after day.
32:48Which I have anyone to say.
32:52There was no hope for him to resume getting any function back at his arms and legs at that time.
33:00Another doctor came in and tried to repair the damage to Jerry's spinal cord.
33:07But he couldn't completely.
33:09And so Jerry was left unable to move.
33:15Jerry Summers, he was freaking out.
33:18He didn't understand what had gone wrong.
33:22But he was screaming and he was yelling.
33:25The nursing staff couldn't even move him for fear of his heart stopping.
33:31I wasn't getting to see Chris.
33:34I was begging to see him and wanting to see him.
33:38And he wasn't around.
33:41I didn't have the proper care that I needed.
33:46And my voice was all I had.
33:50And I was screaming.
33:54Jerry Summers was telling the nursing staff in the ICU at Baylor Plano
33:59that he was using drugs, cocaine, with Dr. Dunch the night before the operation.
34:09I was screaming that we were doing an eight ball before my surgery.
34:13He and our bugs were coke heads.
34:25When I found out Jerry was paralyzed, I was shocked.
34:28I had not realized that anything had gone wrong.
34:31I heard that Jerry woke up screaming in pain.
34:38And was yelling that him and Chris were out doing an eight ball of cocaine the night before his surgery.
34:50Chris seemed very upset.
34:53He seemed like, how could this happen?
34:59Why would my best friends say all these slanderous things?
35:03They just made me look really bad and from the entire hospital.
35:06That's the first time I really noticed that something was wrong.
35:13Jerry and Chris had been friends since junior high.
35:17They lost touch, I think, somewhat when Chris went off to college.
35:20But then he came back to Memphis and they reconnected.
35:24When we were like 19 years old, I remember we were driving down the road
35:28and he was like, you want to take a hit of acid?
35:30And I was like, yeah, I'll take a hit of acid with you.
35:32We popped hit acid.
35:36I'd never taken a hit of acid before.
35:40Christopher Dunch gave me my first hit of acid.
35:43Jerry had a reputation here in town.
35:46He took things, you know, to that umph degree.
35:50I mean, he didn't know when to stop.
35:52Chris and Jerry were the party boys.
35:55Jerry was known as a big-time drug dealer in town.
36:00Chris was very intrigued with a lot of the stuff that went on in my life.
36:04I would say that he and I both were cokeheads.
36:07His first drug of choice would be cocaine.
36:11When he was doing his residency and things like that and the research,
36:14I believe that's when he took it to another level as far as partying.
36:35I told my wife plenty of years before he became a neurosurgeon
36:38that I wouldn't let him operate on me or anybody in my family.
36:41I don't want a doctor that's staying up partying and going to strip clubs
36:46and you hear her doing a lot of drugs operating on me.
37:01I was given a deposition of one of Jerry's old girlfriends
37:06and she described a lot of the party life
37:10that Chris and Jerry had together in Memphis.
37:15How long did this drug party go on that night?
37:19All night until the next day.
37:20Until the sun came up?
37:23Well beyond the sun came up
37:24because Chris had to go to work the next day.
37:26And he went.
37:30Now why does that stick out in your mind
37:32that he was leaving this all-night drug party
37:35with his lab coat on to go work at the children's hospital?
37:39Because most people would call in
37:41after you spend a night using cocaine
37:44most people become paranoid and want to stay in the house
37:47and he was totally fine going to work.
37:52Jerry says we did cocaine the night before the surgery.
37:56This then causes the hospital to launch a big investigation
38:00into what happened and Chris's competence as a surgeon.
38:06There was enough evidence there to get him removed from staff.
38:11But Baylor Plano suspended Dr. Dunch
38:14for approximately three weeks.
38:18Jerry made the allegation about the drugs
38:21about four days after his surgery.
38:23So Dunch was sent by the hospital to get drug tested that day.
38:28Did anybody else, to your understanding,
38:30submit to a urine test?
38:32Dr. Dunch.
38:33Do you know if he ever submitted a urine sample?
38:36Yes, he did.
38:38The result of that is that it's negative.
38:42When I said that we were doing an eight ball
38:44before the surgery, that was totally untrue.
38:49I totally said it just because he wasn't around
38:51and I was yelling and screaming from my doctor
38:54and there was no drug use the night before the surgery.
38:58The night before Jerry's surgery, Chris was at home.
39:02That night, I don't think there was any chance
39:04he was doing an eight ball of cocaine with Jerry.
39:08Dunch was sent to see a counselor to be evaluated
39:11for his mental health fitness
39:13and also to see if there was any concerns
39:16related to drug or alcohol.
39:17And that counselor ultimately cleared him.
39:21I called the chief of surgery back up and yelled at him.
39:24I predicted this outcome a month ago.
39:28Christopher Dunch, he needs to be stopped
39:30at this institution immediately.
39:33They wanted to give him another chance
39:35and they wanted him to continue on practicing neurosurgery
39:39at their hospital.
39:48By the winter of 2012,
39:50at least five spine surgeons
39:53had called the Texas Medical Board.
39:56Baylor Plano should have called the Texas Medical Board.
40:02I had heard through the grapevine
40:05that more people were being injured.
40:06I called the medical board back.
40:08Hey, what's the deal with my case?
40:11We're still investigating.
40:13We can't tell you a thing.
40:15They didn't really seem to care.
40:23The medical board will tell you
40:25there's kind of a hierarchy.
40:27A patient making a complaint about a doctor,
40:31bottom of the barrel.
40:32A doctor making a complaint about another doctor,
40:36well, maybe in the middle somewhere.
40:37A hospital making a complaint to the medical board
40:41about one of their doctors,
40:43four alarm fire,
40:44their urgent, most highest priority.
40:47But Baylor Plano did not report Dr. Dutch.
40:58I do not know exactly what happened
41:01in the C-suites at Baylor Plano,
41:04but business and economic and legal decisions were made,
41:07which clearly put Dr. Dutch's career
41:11and Dr. Dutch's interests
41:13over the patient's interests.
41:16The imaging tests we did on Mr. Summers
41:19were so clear.
41:20It was so clear that the operation
41:21was a completely horrendous procedure.
41:27Before my surgery,
41:29I didn't know of any bad outcomes that he had had.
41:34Thinking that I was going to be in the hospital
41:35maybe two days,
41:37and Chris said I'd be back at his house
41:40and he'd be taking care of me.
41:44And then a house guy dropped on me.
41:54Three weeks after Jerry's surgery,
41:56Christopher Dutch goes back to the hospital
41:58and is saying,
41:58hey, I've got more patients I need to operate on.
42:01When are you guys going to let me start up again?
42:03So the hospital is kind of feeling a lot of pressure,
42:05I think, at this point
42:06to allow Dutch to come back in.
42:09They determine that Chris Dutch
42:11is okay to start operating again,
42:13but he needs to start with just smaller,
42:16minor, day surgery-type operations.
42:19And his very next patient is Kelly Martin.
42:31Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong
42:34in Kelly's surgery.
43:00We're getting ready for Christmas
43:01and getting all the decorations set up,
43:04and we usually do that as a family.
43:07We have a small family,
43:08but we spend a lot of time together.
43:12And my mother would decorate the house.
43:15Christmas was definitely her favorite.
43:20Her and my dad were taking Christmas decorations
43:23down from the attic,
43:24and she fell down,
43:25and she hurt her back.
43:28But Kelly's pain continued
43:29after the fall kept going on,
43:32and I could tell.
43:33Someday she could do chores around the house,
43:35and sometimes she couldn't get in and out of bed.
43:37It was actually affecting her daily life.
43:42So my mother, after she fell,
43:44she did go to our family doctor.
43:46Gave us this card,
43:47and it said,
43:48Dr. Christopher Dutch.
43:51When you hear the schools that he went to
43:53and how prestigious it was
43:57to be able to have him as your physician,
43:59you felt really lucky to be able to get in.
44:01Dr. Dutch seemed very knowledgeable.
44:04He came across very passionate
44:06about helping people
44:07and wanting to make them feel better.
44:10And he said,
44:11I completely understand
44:12what you're going through.
44:13I know exactly how to fix it.
44:20On the day of the surgery,
44:22Kelly, she was concerned.
44:24You could see that on her face a little bit.
44:27But, you know, I was there to reassure her,
44:29and I kissed her,
44:31and I told her I love you,
44:32and I'll see you in an hour.
44:37My mother's surgery,
44:38there was a nerve
44:39that was touching one of the discs.
44:43This surgery was explained to us
44:44to be in and out in a day,
44:46almost so routine,
44:47like a cavity.
44:51During my mother's surgery,
44:53Dr. Dutch came out several times,
44:56explained that it was going fine,
44:59and then he said that
45:00my mother's having issues
45:02coming out of the anesthesia,
45:04and we might keep her here
45:06for a while longer.
45:07He doesn't sound concerned,
45:09but he doesn't sound cheerful.
45:13We're waiting in the waiting room
45:14over an hour.
45:17So I went over to the desk
45:18and asked,
45:19can I get an update on Kelly Martin?
45:21And the nurse went over
45:22and looked at her computer
45:23and said,
45:24oh, she's actually on a different floor.
45:27She's in ICU.
45:28And I said, what?
45:31We went up there,
45:32and I said,
45:34I need an update on my mother,
45:35Kelly Martin.
45:37And when I saw the nurse's face,
45:39we knew something was wrong.
45:44The anesthesiologist kept saying,
45:46you know,
45:46I can't get her blood pressure
45:48under control.
45:48What's going on?
45:50Do you have bleeding?
45:51And Dutch was saying,
45:52no, I don't have any bleeding.
45:53Everything's fine.
45:55The anesthesiologist told Dutch,
45:57we've got to shut this down.
45:58You've got to close her up.
45:59We've got to get her out of here.
46:00Something is wrong.
46:02Dutch does close her up.
46:04They come out of the surgery,
46:06and as they're waking Kelly up,
46:08she begins screaming.
46:15The nursing staff tells me
46:17that her legs were blue
46:19and lifeless from the mid-thigh down.
46:23She's grabbing at the legs
46:24and clawing them.
46:26The ICU staff is so alarmed by this
46:28that they re-intubate her.
46:30They put her back under.
46:31They think,
46:32we're going back into surgery,
46:33but that's not what happens.
46:35I just happened to be up
46:36in the intensive care unit.
46:38I saw Christopher Dutch
46:40in front of the room
46:43of another ICU patient.
46:46All of the rapid response team
46:49and the intensive care unit doctor
46:51were all rushing down there.
46:53There's something terrible
46:54going on in that room.
46:56They begin working on her.
47:00Kelly Martin ends up coding
47:01right there.
47:03Christopher Dutch is calmly
47:05typing a note.
47:07His patient is coding
47:09like a few feet from him,
47:11and he's totally unperturbed.
47:15It's a picture, I think,
47:17that I'll always have in my mind.
47:19I'll never forget it.
47:40I'll never forget it.
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