This article was first published by Wisconsin Watch.
Rita Adamson died under the care of a physician she didn’t want to see.
Rita, 62, lived with cervical cancer for six years. “Until the last day of her life,” her husband Bill wrote, “Rita was active, walked with a cane, prepared food and did shopping.”
Many doctors treated her illness over the years, but one, Adamson said, stood out for his unprofessional behavior: Dr. Scott Kamelle, a gynecologic oncologist from Milwaukee-based Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center, Wisconsin’s largest hospital.
The first time Kamelle interacted with the couple, Rita had been admitted to the hospital. Kamelle was covering for her regular doctor. Kamelle, Adamson said, never showed.
Instead, Adamson alleged in a letter to Aurora’s chief medical officer, Kamelle took three hours to respond to a phone call and lied in hospital records that he had seen and examined Rita when he had not. Kamelle told the couple that she had just a few months to live, he couldn’t do anything to help her, and Rita went home “without adequate pain control,” Adamson wrote.
After that, Rita refused to become Kamelle’s full-time patient. But she had no choice whenever she had an emergency and he was on call. That is what happened the weekend she died.
On the last full day of Rita’s life, July 16, 2016, Adamson surprised her with an anniversary party. But at some point that day, Adamson wrote in the letter, they discovered blood clots filling the drainage bulb that...
When a company promises to save the planet by 2050, it sounds reassuring. But what if that promise comes with no real plan, no credible evidence, and no accountability? A sweeping new study reveal...