Doc slammed with $20.5 million in damages after lipo death

A jury deliberated for 14 hours over three days before awarding an 18-year-old Penn State freshman's parents $20.5 million in damages, finding the Montco doc who did her liposuction liable.

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Push for stricter plastic surgery rules

Lawmakers and physicians' groups want increased oversight of doctors performing cosmetic procedures in outpatient facilities.

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The Bad & The Ugly... More Common than You Think

When other cosmetic surgery victims share their stories with me, I know why I continue my effort in exposing the side of this business which rarely reaches the public. Rachael Landes contacted me several weeks ago via private e-mail after joining Losing Face. Her story is compelling and all too familiar. Like many others who have been seriously injured, she wants the public to know how devastating this nightmare can be..not only its physical aspect, but the hidden repercussions attached to such injury..like patient blacklisting.

I suggested she post her messages to to Losing Face, knowing many of its readers have been victimized by the medical establishment, but think they are only part of a minuscule minority. They are not. The carnage is out there, but those who have been damaged in this profound manner are reluctant to go public for many reasons. From a personal perspective, I often wonder why I continue to subject myself to the barrage of criticism I receive, including exploitation by the media. Then I think: If I remain silent, who will expose this travesty of medicine? You develop a tough skin and must be willing to endure trashing by the public and character assassination by the medical profession to stand your ground when openly criticising high profile surgeons and institutions. More often than not, the price exacted may be your only chance to obtain medical treatment necessary for survival.

Patients and surgeons alike fall victim to the conspiracy of silence within the medical profession. Doctors are justified in their fear of blowing the whistle on incompetent colleagues or disrupting the status quo. The thanks they receive for standing the high ground are few to none. Rather, they are ostracized by peers and their livelihoods threatened. (The Cost of Courage: How the Tables Turn on Doctors) I have personally witnessed good doctors remain silent while they attempt to fix botched operations by incompetent colleagues, and the patients on the receiving end of their skills tacitly agree to remain silent as well.

Rachael is more than willing to share her story so that others may benefit from her experience, but she was not able to post long messages on the board. She gave me a green light to post her e-mail, so I have opened up pages especially for her voice - a voice that needs to be heard.

An Open Letter to Dr. Joel Feldman, Plastic Surgeon

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Left: November 1997 - Before Facelift

Center: 7 weeks After Facelift - 1 week Before Rhinoplasty

Right: 14 months After Rhinoplasty - 16 months After Facelift

Is anyone stupid enough to believe that the sagging, detached sack of soft tissue that is my face and neck is "normal stretchback" which occurs after a facelift just over 1 year old? That is what Dr. Feldman, Dr. James May and the deceitful surgeons at MGH tried to make me believe. This is TISSUE DAMAGE resulting from the trauma of a rhinoplasty done too soon (8 weeks) after a face lift in which the tumescent technique was used. Every patient consulting Drs. Feldman and May should ask them about my case and if they would ever subject one of their own patients to this guinea pig treatment. In fact, Dr. Feldman doesn't hesitate to re-operate on his private patients who end up with a minuscule area of post-seroma rippling. My seroma involved my whole face and neck- all areas involved in the facelift. But as a "clinic patient" they thought it acceptable to treat me as if I were an experimental laboratory animal...disposable. In his book, Dr. Feldman states "If 6 months pass and an unsatisfactory state of appearance has set in, then I think it is reasonable to consider a surgery that would involve a wide undermining of the skin to provide a better chance for skin contraction and accommodation". How fortunate for his private patients. I tried to become one of them, stating in writing that I was willing to pay his full fee. However, his secretary, Laura Keefe, refused to give me an appointment, and informed me that once anyone becomes a patient at the MGH Residents' Clinic, Dr. Feldman will NOT see them as a private patient.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 18, 2007

Dear Dr. Feldman:

Today is my birthday. I am 58 years old. Ten years ago I decided to give myself the ultimate birthday gift..a facelift. On October 16, 1997, I entered the Plastic Surgery Residents' Clinic at MGH at a point in my life where I had everything I ever wanted. I was in perfect health, enjoyed the love of friends and family. My life was rich, not in money or material things, but in ways money cannot buy... through my love and appreciation for nature and my creative ability to enhance that beauty as a gardener.

I was blessed at birth with a pretty face. Like most women, I enjoyed enhancing my appearance with cosmetics, keeping my body fit and healthy, adorning myself with clothes of my own design.
At 48, I succumbed to the allure of a facelift. As a well informed patient, my expectations were reasonable. I cut doctors more slack than most, having lived and worked with an MD for 12 years. I trusted doctors, as those I knew personally never displayed a hint duplicity.

The simple effort of typing this post leaves me short of breath. I am forced to live with a piece of wood pressed hard against my neck 24 hours a day to breathe. Things that require the use of two hands must be done in fits and starts, like a swimmer coming up for air. So I will not revisit details about my surgeries I have repeated ad nauseum on my website Losing Face.

The message I wish to convey to you today... my birthday, is this: Your decision, in conjunction with Dr. James May, Director of the Residents' Clinic, to perform my rhinoplasty 8 weeks after my facelift and lower blepharoplasty was imprudent and irresponsible. Your decision resulted in permanent tissue damage to all undermined areas of my face and neck. The massive swelling after my rhinoplasty damaged the newly forming adhesion between the tissue planes. My face and neck was one massive seroma; resulting in what you call a "soggy" platysma.

You refused to see me as a private patient when I offered to pay your full fee. You agreed to see me 8 months after the injurious rhinoplasty and claimed your "examination" revealed no "abnormality". While I begged and pleaded for MGH to perform simple dermatological studies on the effected tissue, even if nothing could be done surgically to improve the appearance of the sagging face I did not have before my facelift, you and MGH ignored me. You and MGH forced me to waste months of my life behind a keyboard, writing letters, literally begging and groveling for you to recognize "complications" you mention in your book "Neck Lift".

Dr. Feldman, it was your responsibility to perform my revision surgery, according to the consent I signed at MGH. Please remember that I based my decision to undergo rhinoplasty only 8 weeks after my facelift because I believed it must be safe if approved by a surgeon with your illustrious reputation. You forced me to seek a revision elsewhere and that surgery left me unable to lift my head, close my jaw, breathe or swallow normally since the day of the operation. The damaged platysma, thinned and stretched to the limit of its biomechanical extendability, was surgically manipulated in a manner that is literally killing me. Dr. 's surgically created fixed contracture of a muscle sheath devoid of any ability to stretch, has transferred the inappropriate vectors of tension to adjacent tissue. Over six physically torturous years, it has gradually and continually displaced the internal anatomy of the throat, causing the positional airway obstruction diagnosed by a pulmonologist in 2004.

The surgeon in Hyannis who removed my sutures after Dr. Barry Eppley's revision facelift said he would consider releasing the platysma muscle "if I twisted his arm". That was in July 2001 when I saw him for injection of a trigger thumb. His notes do not mention our discussion about my inability to lift my head or close my jaw, though on that day, he drew a diagram of the transverse incision he always uses in face/neck lifts, which Dr. Eppley neglected to use, in spite of his agreement to to do so. I know my own anatomy and the limitations the damaged tissue would impose upon revision. I was certain my revision would require, without exception, a release of that muscle one way or another. My present state proves I was correct.

You tried to have my accurate photos removed from the Internet with your lawsuit in Sept 2002. In October 2002, I called the doctor who originally removed my sutures intending to "twist his arm" to perform the platysma release. His secretary phoned me to say the doctor suggests I return to.. in Indiana.. when I had not been able to drive to Boston by myself because I could not lift my head to see the road and breathe at the same time. I believe your lawsuit influenced his decision, as I know it has that of other surgeons from whom I sought help... not for aesthetic reasons, but to literally save my life.

I am dying, Dr. Feldman, from an operation I would never have sought elsewhere if you had addressed my legitimate problem in a timely manner. You told writer Rich Bergeron that you did not operate on me because you thought you could not make me "happy"... Happy? I am trying to save my life! You are responsible for my ending up in the hands of another surgeon...one who led me to believe he understood the limitations of the compromised tissue you caused with your irresponsible decision to supervise my rhinoplasty before my facelift was sufficiently healed.

You told Rich Bergeron that I did not have swallowing difficulty after my rhinoplasty. Strictly speaking, I was able to swallow.. I did not have dysphagia.. Yet I have a tape recording of my conversation with Dr. May in which I am telling him the sagging tissue of my neck made chewing and swallowing feel like hard work, that I had pain directly in the area of the platysma plication when I swallowed. In this taped conversation I reminded him that the consent form stated that if a revision was necessary, the surgeon's fee would be waived. I told him that it was obvious to me that the platysma plication tore through or separated after the rhinoplasty swelling, which my documented photographs clearly prove.

Your arrogance and deceit in trying to make a judge believe it was humanly possible to deliberately contort one's face to cause the appearance of sagging I did not have before the facelift is evidence of the double standard you engage for your private patients as opposed to "clinic" patients. You prove this aspect of your character in your own book. I am certain you didn't accuse the patient with the "crinkly skin" that did not "stick down" of deliberately contorting her face and neck to make it "appear" that way as you did to me. In fact, anyone, regardless of age or skin tone, would find it quite IMPOSSIBLE to deliberately contort their face to create the sagging in my photos.

You accused me of having BDD, which I never had. I have always been far less demanding than the average patient, willing to accept the imperfections that are bound to occur. Your lawyers chewed me up and spit me out for telling the truth on the Internet, which you forced me to do because you chose to deny the obvious. I have been exploited by filmmakers, demeaned by your unscrupulous attorneys and libeled in a medical journal. You have ignored the reality of the destruction of a life which your decisions facilitated.

I am still alive, but just barely hanging on. Rich Bergeron contacted me one year ago wanting to write about my experience after seeing the HBO documentary in which I appeared, because the film made him feel as if something was "missing" from my story as it was portrayed. His intuition was accurate. He is, or more accurately, was optimistic that in interviewing the doctors involved in my surgeries, he would initiate a "happy ending" to my story. At that point, he was not able to accept that I would be left to die a slow death, suffering increasing disability until I am no longer able to survive on my own. Having accompanied me on my last appointment with an ENT specialist, he now believes differently...

I need to tell you, while I am still able, that your decisions regarding my case were fatally flawed. I have been robbed of 10 years of peace of mind, and subjected to 6 /12 years of continual physical torture. You could have prevented this, but you did not. You accused me of heinous lies and morphing photographs when you had a direct hand in causing the damage depicted in those accurate photos. I have forgotten the kind and caring person I used to be. You betrayed my trust. I hope you are never allowed to forget me when I am gone. I know Rich Bergeron will never forget what he has witnessed of my life this past year, and I know he will set the record straight regarding my experience, even if it does not have the happy conclusion he wanted. You told Rich that you thought of contacting me... but you did not. Why not? Did you not realize that all I wanted was to be treated like a human being?

I TRUSTED you. I never wanted to point the finger of blame at any doctor, but neither could I allow an opportunity for doctors to learn from my suffering to be thrown by the wayside because doctors cannot admit they are only human and make mistakes. You misjudged me because you never allowed yourself to see me as a human being, rather than a surgical case at the Resident's Clinic. You have no idea whom you helped to destroy. That sensitive, kind person died.. killed by the arrogance of a profession impressed by its own narcissistic power.

I am trying to save my life. I have begged and groveled for doctors' help for years when you and MGH deliberately denied the reality of the tissue damage. Your lawsuit which attempted to force removal of my photos from the Internet served to BLACKLIST me from receiving the medical attention I now require to SAVE MY LIFE. You are capable of saving my life.

If you remain silent and do nothing to help me, I want people to know of your refusal to accept responsibility for your actions and your disregard for my appeal to help save my life before it is too late. .
Shalom, Dr. Feldman...

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Photos documented by legal photographer.. No room for misrepresentation here. You cannot FAKE or deliberately contort your face to produce the sagging and "detachment" caused from massive swelling of a rhinoplasty performed too soon (8 weeks) after a facelift. This is what Dr. Feldman DENIED happened, and worse, falsely accused me of deliberately posting misleading photos online. His colleague, Dr. Barry Zide, who made libelous reference to me in the Journal of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery by accusing me of morphing photos he called "ghoulish", reviewed these same photos himself, shortly after my surgery at Mass General.. He certainly wasn't calling them morphed then.


Watch Interview with photographer & filmmaker Erika Hahn who followed my surgery journey with photo documentation for 10 years.

Do they tell the kids Mommy might end up maimed for life or dead?

New Kids' Book on Plastic Surgery Skirts Breasts

Source: Newsweek, April 15, 2008
How does a mother explain to her children why she's having a breast augmentation, a tummy tuck or a nose job? Help is on the way -- a new book for kids about plastic surgery, My Beautiful Mommy. The story features a handsome, musclebound, superhero-type male doctor and a Mommy who says that as she got older, she couldn't fit into her clothes any more. Mom explains to her child that the doctor is going to help her fix all that. Mom comes home after surgery looking slightly bruised and bandaged, but with fuller, higher breasts. The text of the book doesn't mention breasts, though; only Mom's "tummy." Michael Salzhauer, the plastic surgeon who wrote the book, said, "The tummy lends itself to an easy explanation to the children: extra skin and can't fit into your clothes. The breasts might be a stretch for a six-year-old."

PHOTOS
Gallery: Mom's New Look
Excerpts from a new picture book for the children of women who have cosmetic surgery.