Category Archives: outrage

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21 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by in Evil, outrage, PTSD, Rape, Uncategorized

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Eight years ago, in the hot sticky month of June, I called the FBI field office in Pittsburgh to turn in a fellow medical student for trafficking a child. A three year old little girl, specifically. They never returned my call. So, I sat and typed it all out and emailed it to them on their website. I didn’t think I’d ever hear from them. So, I copy and pasted it onto an anonymous blog I was keeping at the time. I didn’t think he’d ever go to prison. And I thought he would probably kill me as he’d promised to do if ever I turned him in. No one in my life knew what had been going on for months. My ordeal. So I pasted it to my anonymous blog. Because you need to speak, no matter what. Because I needed to believe somewhere someone would read it and know my truth. And maybe if I died, the truth at least had a chance of coming out.

He went to prison. He’s in prison for 45 years now. In Arizona. I track him online on this federal prisons website where you can look up any prisoner by name (who knew such a thing existed? Funny how life goes). My victim advocate from the FBI, Bridget, has long since released me from her care, although I wasn’t clear on what she did anyway. When the judge sentenced him, sentenced Jeremy, Jeremy Noyes, he said Jeremy was one of the worst sadistic criminals he’d ever seen. You should be grateful, dear reader, you weren’t at his trial when they showed the images he had on his computer. You would never be the same again. You cannot imagine the evil men are capable of. Men that are medical students, future doctors. I was there. I was there in that beautiful courthouse with its arches and mezzanine (or was it a balcony? It was beautiful either way) when my rapist called me to the stand to question me (did I mention he fired his lawyer and represented himself? That I got the unique experience of being cross examined by my rapist?). There I sat in federal court in Erie, Pennsylvania. Just me and my rapist. And 12 jurors. And the press. And several lawyers. And all the people who just came to watch.

My school was not kind to me for turning this man in. And so, after all these years, I have finally found the courage and the energy to once again email the federal government. I’m once again afraid nothing will happen, so here I am on a blog. Once again. But this time it is not anonymous. I am not ashamed anymore. I am proud. I am a goddamned hero.

We Liked You Better When You Didn’t Talk So Much: Life After PTSD (a.k.a. after your fasciotomy for compartment syndrome of the soul)

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in doctors, empathy, kids, outrage, PTSD, residency

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Compartment Syndrome with Fasciotomy Procedure

It’s been four months since I recovered from my seven year bout of PTSD. (See previous entries of my blog for real time coverage of the recovery process). My coworkers don’t really know I had PTSD (although I did give a talk on PTSD and tell them the reason I was giving it was because I had it, I think they either weren’t paying attention or blocked it out). They just know that all of a sudden a few months ago I stopped being so quiet and agreeable all the time. At first they thought it was great. I’d blossomed. Developed self-confidence, gotten a backbone. They assumed it to be the result of residency training. But as the months have gone on and I’ve become more and more my true self, they’ve started commenting to me they miss the old quiet me.

I’m a little too opinonated, they say. Talk a little too much now. I’m too hard on the interns. I’m angry, they say. Well folks, what I really am is … me. The real me not suffocating under PTSD. The real me not constantly trying to avoid the bad things I think are coming. The real me who isn’t convinced I’m going to get kicked out of the medical profession if I let on to who I am.

I am indeed angry at times. Unapologetically angry. Righteously angry. Old testament angry. Jesus turning over the money changers table angry. Malcolm X I’m-done-begging-for-crumbs angry. No apologies.

I am hard on the interns. Hard on them like my senior residents were hard on me. I thank God my seniors were so hard on me. Guess what? We’re training them to be doctors. We’re not at the brownie jamboree seeing how many friendship bracelets we can collect. They’re here to learn to be excellent doctors: thorough, hard-working, devoted, compassionate physicians who think things through and can communicate and lead. Some interns need more nurturing than others, but even the most fragile (hi, I had freaking PTSD when I was an intern. I was about as fragile as they come) needs to be held to a high standard. We owe it to them and every patient they will ever treat.

I do talk a lot and have a lot of opinions. It’s not that I have a lot of opinions that bothers them though. I haven’t met many doctors who don’t have a lot of opinions they feel you must be dying to hear all about. What bothers them is that my opinions disagree with theirs. I don’t find their sexist jokes funny or even acceptable. I’m really such a drag, I know. But I’m 36 and I have a daughter and I’m done tolerating that crap.  The male residents are assertive while the female ones are called aggressive and told to tone it down for the same behavior. The male residents really hold the line and don’t take shit while the female residents are told to calm down and lighten up when we do the same thing. To hell with that.

It’s possible I’m a little overly zealous with the assertiveness and rightous anger right now as I delight in my recovery, but can you blame me? PTSD is hell. You’re not dead but you’re only technically alive. I’ve got seven years of pent up thoughts, words, feelings, and actions here.

In my defense, it’s not all anger and thunder bolts around me. I have a lot of joy. I’ve made a lot of progress on forgiveness (entry on that to come). I’m just not PTSD Barbie anymore, putting all my energy into pleasing everyone and always agreeing and going along and not complaining and working myself to exhaustion because I’m afraid everything’s going to fall apart at any moment.

My husband and I met when I was in the thick of the PTSD so he’s had a little bit of a switch-a-roo pulled on him. He always wished I’d be more assertive and talk more, but , as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

The thing that’s frustrating about all of this for me is that I’ve been given this amazing gift. PTSD was hell. I can’t tell you how much of the past seven years I had spent wishing I could die. Knowing I couldn’t kill myself because of my kids and asking God why he would put me in that position. The blackness inside of you. The expansive emptiness that feels like it will break you apart. The loneliness you feel like you just can’t bear. And there’s no end in sight. There’s no hope. The fear. Every noise makes your heart race. Do you know how many times your pager goes off a year as a resident? Do you know what it’s like to feel terrifed every time it does just because of the sound it makes? To not be able to trust anyone, not even your husband. To not let yourself open your heart to your kids because you’re expecting them to be gone any minute. To go on psych med after psych med after psych med looking for an answer and all they do is make you tired and remind you you’re crazy.

And I finally escape all that and the people I work with, the physicians I work with, they tell me they like me better the way I was. So, you’ll have to excuse me if I’m unapologetic. If I relish giving them a piece of my mind when it comes to what is right. Silence does not protect us, it fills us with its void until the tensile strength of the matter of us gives out. It’s like compartment syndrome of the soul. You must release the pressure surgically and when you do, sometimes things burst forth and get messy. But it’s the only hope of saving the limb. The real me has come back out and I couldn’t stuff her back in to the old necrotic shell even if I wanted to. And I most definitely do not want to.

The Scarlet S on my White Coat

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From January 2015:

His name is Rohit Agrawal and he’s the Secretary of the State Board of Osteopathic Medicine. I didn’t remember his name all these years but I looked him up recently. He’s one of the people who punished me for stopping a sociopathic child rapist. He’s one of the physicians who punished me for stopping a sociopathic child rapist.

Today, it’s his job to handle cases of physicians in Pennsylvania who have had ethical breeches. I’d call it ironic or ridiculous if it weren’t so disturbing and very serious.

In August 2008 he came to my medical school campus, the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, and gave the student body a talk about sex and how it could get you in trouble as a physician. That may sound like an odd thing to you, a state physician licensing official coming to muggy Erie Pennsylvania to give a lecture on keeping your knees together to a group of student doctors. But this was no ordinary August day.

You see, two days earlier one of the medical students at my school had been arrested by the FBI for possession and transport of child pornography and obscenity. They had come to his door the morning of a big exam and come into his house with guns drawn and arrested him.

They’d seized his computers and found that he’d been looking at violent graphic pictures of little girls just an hour earlier. Little girls bound and gagged by duct tape with their legs over their shoulders.

When this physician came to speak to us, this leader, this pillar of physician ethics, I assumed he would talk about that child rapist. He started talking to us about a fellow medical student. He didn’t give the student’s name but I assumed it must be this student.

I was naive.

He said this student was sexually immoral. He said this student wasn’t fit to be a physician. He said this student really ought to leave med school now before she got into more debt. Because she wasn’t fit to be a physician. Because she never would be a physician. Let her be a warning to you. Don’t be sexually immoral like her.

I don’t remember the exact moment I realized he was talking about me and not Jeremy, the child rapist. I don’t remember what exact phrase he used that made me realize it. I do remember how it felt. I remember my stomach dropping and my heart racing and the tears welling up in my eyes. I remember the fear and humiliation and anger and confusion and despair. I remember that well.

I didn’t remember his name afterwards. I was so filled with shame after going through my several months long ordeal of rape, torture and humiliation at the hands of Jeremy, that I just wanted to try to forget all of it. Including what Dr. Agrawal did to me.

And so I forgot his name. Because I could. And any crumb of it I could forget was a relief I welcomed.

I couldn’t forget his words, though. Or the shame and betrayal I felt because of them. I couldn’t forget his face.

Years passed. I needed to finish medical school. I had children to raise. I met my new husband and married him. Eric and I spent our first Valentines Day together as a couple in federal court at Jeremy’s trial.

After med school there was residency to tackle. Our sweet baby came along.

The PTSD was with me through all of this. On top of me. Like Jeremy had been. Choking me. Like Jeremy had.

I finally gathered the courage to look up Rohit Agrawal’s name on November 15, 2014. Six years and 3 months after his talk. Six years and 3 months after his assault. That scarlet S he’d pinned to my white coat.

There he was. Still on the state medical board. The secretary now, actually. He’s an emergency medicine physician according to the Google. He’s trained to collect rape kits when victims come into the emergency room then.

I wrote his name down. I typed into a memo on my phone. I did not memorize it. I had to copy and paste it tonight for this piece.

A physician charged with leading the physicians of this state actively participated in publicly punishing a student doctor who’d stopped a child rapist student doctor at the risk of losing her life. He very actively, explicitly, and personally sent a message to hundreds of future physicians that if they chose to do the same they would be punished too.

That. Is. Dangerous.

It is immoral, unethical, and unacceptable.

His name is Dr. Rohit Agrawal and he punished me for stopping a child predator.

Of Angels and Devils

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Posted by in christianity, doctors, empathy, Evil, outrage, PTSD, Rape, Sin

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gelfand

From January 2015:

Dr. Steven Gelfand died on January 18th after a brief battle with cancer. He was 66 years old. He was also amazing.

I’m going to tell you about him. And just from reading about it, you’ll be better off for having known what little I can tell you here.

I met Dr. Gelfand July of 2009. He was the attending of my very first clinical rotation as a medical student. The first two years of med school are spent in the classroom and the last two years are spent on rotation. You get to leave the classroom and spend time actually doing medicine.

I’d had PTSD for about a year at this point. My perpetrator, a fellow medical student, had been arrested in August 2008. My trauma officially ended with his arrest I suppose, and then came the PTSD.

After he was arrested, my medical school became upset with me. You see, the FBI released my name (even though they didn’t need to) and implied a lot of things about my personal life, sex life, and mental health in the affidavit they used to arrest the sociopathic child molestor I’d turned in. Some of what they wrote about me was accurate and some of it wasn’t. Two things made very clear by this affidavit were:
1. He was a dangerous sadistic pedophile
2. I had risked my life and the lives of my children to turn him in.

I’d like to think a medical school, an institution charged with shaping the physicians we place our trust in and rely on for our lives and health, would be appreciative of a future doctor risking her life and the lives of her children to stop a fellow future doctor who is a sadistic pedophile from hurting any more women or children. But that’s not how it went.

Quite the opposite.

My school chose to punish me instead. They placed me on probation for having morals below the standards of the community (in reference to the affidavit’s inference that I had engaged in consensual, kinky sex with the perpetrator before The Ordeal began). More than this, they waged psychological warfare on me. They brought in a speaker from the state board of medicine (and an alum of the school) who spoke in front of the entire student body about me, saying I really should leave med school now because I wasn’t fit to be a doctor. Warning them not to be like me. A sexually immoral person. The head of my school told me I would never be a doctor. She said no doctor would take someone like me on for clinical rotations and that even if I somehow managed to become a doctor, I would never have patients because I was so disgusting, they wouldn’t want me touching them.

Such cruel words coming from the head of your medical school, coming to you in an acute post-traumatic state, has such an impact. I didn’t even realize at the time how much I believed her.

I was able to get a lawyer and, after a legal battle, get her off my back (but not before suffering the utter humiliation of being forced to apologize for my behavior to the faculty of my school.) But she had gotten inside of my post-traumatic soul and planted herself there.

Fast forward a year to my first day of clinical rotations. The day she said would never come.

The PTSD had obliterated my self-confidence. Deep inside I was afraid she was right, that I wasn’t going to make it and I should have cut my losses when I had the chance.

I know there is a God because it cannot be chance that I wound up on Dr. Gelfand’s doorstep. By the end of my first day with him he’d shared with me that he had no respect for the head of my school. In fact, he told me, he’d once told her to go f*** herself. He was a Jewish, cursing, bold as all hell, certified angel.

He told me she had once punished a medical student he had rotating with him after he gave the student time off to spend with her mother who was dying of cancer. He responded by sharing his feelings as above.

I ended up telling him what had happened to me. The brave deed I’d done and the evil she’d paid me with. He told me I’d done a courageous thing, the right thing. And he told me not to tell any other doctors like I’d just told him. It could ruin my medical career.

Over the next two years, he became my two special needs sons’ neuropsychiatrist. He was, by far, the best doctor they’ve ever had. He became a mentor for me too. He told me I was going to be a great doctor. And part of me actually believed him somehow.

He was a tough attending. He let you know every single detail you got wrong. But he also let you know when you got something right. And when he did, it really meant something.

He went into medicine for the right reason. He cared about his patients and worked for and advocated for them fiercely. He was good and he knew it, and he earned it.

Dr. Gelfand was right that I shouldn’t tell the other doctors I would be rotating with what she’d done to me. It wasn’t the time for it. She still had the power to end my career. I wasn’t emotionally ready to speak publicly about it yet either.

But I have been healed of my PTSD after seven long years. I am getting ready to graduate from a wonderful, supportive residency. And I’ve never been one to keep quiet.

It was Martin Luther King day on Monday so we talked to our kids about the civil rights movement. We talked about the turning points like Rosa Parks and how those were just moments that sparked off a movement that ha been building for a long time. My son asked me why those particular events set things in motion and I told him no one could say for sure.

The passing of this amazing man has changed things for me. Something has been brewing within me that would inevitably, eventually come out. I didn’t know when.

The silence ends now.

Jeremy Noyes raped me, tortured me, threatened to kill me and my babies. My medical school punished me for risking all of that to do what is right as a physician and as a person. He is now serving 45 years in federal prison. What my school did was wrong and dangerous. They sent a clear message to that school full of future doctors that turning in a child predator could cost you your career. It was unethical, immoral, and unacceptable.

Your seven years is up, LECOM. Let’s talk.

Of Santa Claus and Mama Lions

28 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by in empathy, Evil, kids, love, outrage, parenting, Rape, Sin

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My husband recently informed me my nine year old son no longer believes in Santa. My ten year old with autism still believes. He told me he wants an English policeman costume for Christmas. When I told him that might hard for me to find, he said, don’t worry because Santa can make anything. He said Santa would make it because he doesn’t really believe in elves anymore. I said, so just Santa? He said, well Mrs. Clause too. Obviously. It would be lonely at that cold North Pole without someone to come home to.

My husband and my ex-husband as well don’t really agree with the Santa thing. You shouldn’t lie to your kids, they say. How could they ever trust you once they find out the truth. You lied, you lied! All those years, all those lies! I’ve gotta admit, when they say that my first thought is just, WTF? Are you serious? Then I calm down and formulate a more helpful defense. It’s a little moment of magic we give them for a few years. It’s what childhood is supposed to be. They have the rest of their lives to come to terms with reality. Give them a little piece of magic before the, lets be honest, rather brutal process of growing up begins. They will come across so many lies in their lives told for unkind ends. If we can tell a few to make the brief flash of true childhood a little more magical, I say, do it. I say, it’s not fair for us to impose the world as we see it on them.

There is a truth to Santa. He may not be a man, but he’s the personification of all we feel and hope for them. He is what childhood is. And I hope that’s what we want for them.

I’ve come to realize that protecting childhood is more important to me than almost anything in this world. I don’t mean spoiling kids, I don’t mean coddling them. I mean keeping them safe, giving them room to be themselves, fostering their confidence. When they are young, giving them a time of sweet oblivion from the way of the world. As they get older, leading them into the world as gently and meaningfully as we can. Cradling the fragility of what is true about that childhood innocence intact into the fallen world so they can thrive despite it all and hopefully do some good along the way.

As important as all of this is to me, there is an accompanying … frustration. Yes, we’ll say frustration. We’ll be diplomatic. A frustration with adults who derail this in the less obvious ways. Obviously, there are those who deny kids safety, whether it be sexual, physical, emotional, spiritual. There are those who are not strong enough to let them be themselves. Those who allow their own wounds to keep them from letting them know how wonderfully made they truly are. And frustration is not the word I use for these adults. They are what’s wrong with this world. They are original sin.

The ones I am frustrated with are not the wounded, the evil, the weak. They’re the ones who never really became adults themselves. The ones who do not know the evil this world holds, the suffering, the injustice, the unfairness. Does that sound mean? Bitter? Pessimistic? If so, you may be one of these adults yourself. Before you get all defensive, let’s look at the facts:

1 in 4 girls will be sexually molested in some way
1 in 3 women will be sexually victimized in some way in her life
1 in 4 women will be raped in her lifetime (rape being specifically vaginal or anal penetration)
1 in 6 boys will be sexually molested in some way
That’s in the U.S.

22,000 children die from poverty a day worldwide
28% of children in developing countries are underweight or growth stunted

So, yes, the obliviously priveleged adults of this world frustrate me. They’re safe and warm in their cocoons and the children of the world are outside left on their own. They ignore the safety so many children are denied. They cannot prepare any of the children to make that transition from the innocence of early childhood to the world of trouble and sin we live in. They need to get their asses out here and get to work.

There is a lot of work to do.

I am, above all, a mama lion. For my children and for all the others. Children need milk and play, to learn to fend. They also need a mama willing to rip out the intestines of those who threaten.

Man up, people. Be the mamas they need.

Only Ivy Leaguers Get Raped Apparently

27 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by in doctors, empathy, medicine, outrage, residency

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I was once raped by an educated man. He knew a lot about sociology, philosophy, and medicine. He was also a misogynist who harbored a secret internal hatred for women which he hid very well from all those around him. It wasn’t any more or less traumatic because he was so educated. It wasn’t any more or less shocking to me because we were both studying to be doctors at the time. It was what all trauma is: Brutal and Terrifying and Life changing. When you know you’re in a position so powerless that you might be killed, education and institutional prestige are of little concern. But in the days and months and years that follow, you cannot be truly healed until you find your voice and tell your story in whatever form it is that your story needs to be told. When our society priveleges the stories of certain survivors over others (what of men, prisoners, spousal rape survivors?) it keeps us from healing as quickly as we should. I am glad the voices of certain surivors from Ivy League schools are being heard to the extent they are (I don’t delude myself into thinking things are great for them), but we cannot ignore the voices of so many others. We have a story to tell too.

There’s been a lot of media coverage of the campus rape epidemic lately. Which is a good thing. There’s been an outcry against George Will’s op-ed piece questioning the validity of a lot of these rapes and talking about the privileges attached to being a rape survivor. Also a good thing. But if you read the majority of these articles, you’d think rape and a lack of appropriate administrative response by universities only occurred at elite schools. It wasn’t until I was about a dozen articles in that I even knew a medical school, WVSOM ( West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine), was one of the 55 schools under federal investigation for failing to handle reported rapes appropriately. The only reason it got a mention in the article was the fact it was a lesser known school and I got the impression that the point the writer was making was that it’s a lot more shocking that rape victims get treated badly at an Ivy League school than at one of those lesser known schools.

What’s the logic there? Do people in the Ivy League have higher moral standards than us commoners ? Is the upper class known for its devotion to women’s rights? More importantly, regardless of how surprised you are with the Ivy League’s mistreatment of sexual assualt victims (as opposed to those low brow schools where you just expect people to get raped and then harassed by the administration apparently), does that mean that the voices of the men and women at the other 45 schools don’t deserve to be heard as well? Is it any less an outrage when it happens to someone at a lowly osteopathic med school? It’s a lot of questions and I’m sure you can tell how I would answer them, but I’d really like to hear how these journalists would answer them. I know no one is truly unbiased, but can’t they at least pretend, make some kind of effort to appear to give a damn about the rest of us?

When I mentioned the news about WVSOM to some of my fellow residents, they were genuinely shocked. Not only could they not believe a medical school would treat a student who’d been raped poorly, they honest-to-goodness couldn’t fathom the idea that medical students would rape one another. They really just couldn’t comprehend the idea of one of our kind being a sexual predator. Am I the only one bothered that our culture is promoting these kinds of ideas?

It is shocking someone from the Ivy League would rape. It is shocking someone studying to become a doctor would rape. Okay, then who is it that we expect to rape? Apparently we expect uneducated people to rape. I guess the idea is that education is a humanzing process? But rape is, in essence, a very human act. One of the most human acts really. Rape is about anger and the need to control, something every level of society has demonstrated since civilization began. Is it really so difficult to think that Ivy League men, so used to privelege and control, might not have a need to control Ivy League women too? Do medical school admission commitees really get a feel for how angry an applicant is? Unless they’ve been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor, probably not. (And if you’ve ever been in an OR with an instrument-hurling surgeon, you might question if anger in and of itself is a generally discouraged trait in the world of medicine)

I don’t suppose we’ll ever be as upset with the death of innocent civilians overseas as we will be with the death of innocent civilians in America. Maybe we’ll always mourn more for caucasian, suburban school children shot than we do for african-american inner-city kids killed likewise. But, I hope for better days. And I work for better days. My name is Elizabeth Spaar and I was raped in medical school. Yes, our kind do indeed do that kind of thing. Of course, it was an osteopathic school, so maybe you’re unimpressed.