Do No Harm?

The fall from grace. Drama is full of these stories going back to the Greeks. The tragic hero, of noble birth in the classic form of tragedy or of high ranking in the more modern treatment, experiences a down fall or reversal of fortune as a result of some flaw in his character. Pride, hubris, denial, power, and greed seem to be recurring themes in tragic stories from Oedipus Rex to Richard Nixon leading to an awakening or insight.

Only yesterday did I come face to face with this dramatic story line yet again when I ran across a news article published in February of 2009. My heart caught in my throat when I read Prominent Laguna Beach Aids Doctor Admits to Under Dosing Patients. Faces up to Fifty years in Prison.

The cost to medicare and other agencies was estimated to be over $600,000 but the cost to human life, incalculable.

A chill ran through me. Is it possible that this is the same doctor who had taken on nearly mythic proportions in the story of my family? Could it possibly be the same doctor, who held my brother's hand so tenderly and who skillfully maneuvered the labyrinth of health care options for us in 1994? The doctor who seemed to know how to work the system so well, that my brother, who had no insurance at the time of his diagnoses, received what we thought to be adequate and appropriate treatment? According to a 2009 article in the OC Weekly, it was indeed this Dr. Kooshian.

The doctor to whom I'd written a tearful and heartfelt letter of thanks for rescuing us at the lowest point in our lives?
My memory flooded with scenes from that time - Dr. Kooshian - in his office - in his tennis togs - aggressively advising us on how to take my brother in to ER at midnight at UCI in order to have a shunt inserted for his hydrocephalus. Advice, by the way, we did not follow as it seemed an extreme measure in a hopeless situation.

This Dr. Kooshian, was found to be defrauding the system and worse, playing with the lives of his patients by consistently administering lower doses or in some cases, vitamins instead of the anti-viral medication they desperately needed and trusted they were getting?

The violation of his hippocratic oath to "Do No Harm " is shocking. Scoundrel. Monster. Liar. I feel on the one hand outraged by the revelation that the man in whom I placed the life of my brother turned out to be a crook. On the other, I am fascinated by the duplicity. The potential for a person to be a real life Jekyll and Hyde.

My direct experience of Dr. Kooshian was that he was tender, caring, and generous. How could he have been driven to such deceit? To say I am saddened is an understatement. Kooshian wouldn't know me or remember me because my brother's death was mercifully quick and I am quite sure Kooshian did not contribute to it in any way. Whether he bilked the system in my brother's name, I have no way of knowing.

I only know that today there is a hole in a tiny corner of my heart where once I held Dr. Kooshian.