Hiya Frannie!
I've also had experience with this nut job. He put me on a medication that was only reserved for psychotic persons, after he diagnosed me with paranoid schizophrenia. That night, after my first dose of the medication, I had hallucinations like you wouldn't believe! I called my regular GP in the city I live in, and he told me that that if you *aren't* schizophrenic, then that medicine will cause schizophrenic conditions in you, but if you are, then it will help you. I went to this unruly doctor at the behest of my JW mother, with whom I was living. His office was 150 miles away, but she thought that I should see a "sympathetic" doctor. He read me scriptures, gave me the scrip, and told me that I would just have to take the medicine, live with my parents, and wait on Jehovah's new paradise to get better.
One year later, I was living out on my own with a new house, new car and new job. I went back down to his office to retrieve my medical records for a custody fight. He wouldn't give them to me. He said that he wouldn't testify if he was called on. I saw him in his office, and I told him that he should be sued for malpractice for diagnosing me as PS, when I was diagnosed as depressed by more than ONE psychiatrist, and it was all because of this oppressive, authoritarian religion I had been raised in. I also told him that if I was "submissive" that I would have accepted his diagosis and just lived off my parents instead of pursuing getting well, and that it should be apparent that I was well since I was doing all the things a productive human adult does. My lawyer had to call down there and threaten him to get my records handed to me, which would have been under subpoena if I hadn't have gotten them at the time. He kept telling me, the louder I got, that it showed I was disturbed and didn't deserve my child to live with me because I needed the medicine. Oh my gawd.. the more he patronized me, the louder and more angry I got. Grrrrrr!
My Mother just held this man in AWE because she said that he had actually risked his medical license by taking JW's and JW children out of hospitals in the middle of the night when doctors were trying to get court orders for transfusions. Don't knwo if this is true.. or just JW urban legend. I do know that he made LOTS of $ off the JW's, since he ran a pretty sweltering business. WHen I was down there in Houston, there was at least 20 patients in his office waiting to see him, all JW's. His office was disturbing to say it best... it was a glass front in a tiny strip mall in Houston. The glass on the windows was tinted... and just had his name on the door. He prescribed for me a variety of "Bronson" brand vitamins (cheap -- but he charged a bit more), the "medicine" ... which was Thioridizine, which is given to schizophrenics.. and then hydroxyzine, which was an anti-anxietal. I knew I had anxiety.. but the Thioridizone was a little too much.. I started hallucinating the minute I took it.
But the whole reading scriptures to me was really scary... it really scared me. Doctors don't *do* that.. or they shouldn't. And just giving you NO HOPE! He said "wait on Jehovah" basically.
I'm glad he's dead now, and he won't hurt any other patients with his brand of maverick medical malpractice. I hear his son is doing pretty much the same thing, but I don't know.
Just suffice it to say, it was a very wierd medical experience, and one that I won't repeat. No one should read scriptures to someone when they are hurting so much and need medical help. So stupid... I hear through the grapevine his son is partaking of this font of urban cash flow. Doesn't surprise me...
CG
