Back a few months ago I saw a commercial for this miniseries, Dr. Death and knew at some point I was going to get Peacock to watch it. Well, that time has come and it was well worth a month of my life subscribing to NBC’s streaming service. The cast alone was enough to sell it for me, and of course the subject matter was intriguing, but even with just the first episode I was hooked!
Truthfully, I never listened to the podcast that this was based on, but since Christopher Duntsch was a real life practicing physician who is now in jail, it wasn’t hard to find out about his life on the internet. I did wait until after I finished the series though, to make the events all the more shocking. And let me tell you what, it was truly shocking what this sociopath did. Truly, Duntsch has to be a sociopath. That’s the only reason I can understand to explain the things he did to people that just didn’t want to have a painful back.
Instead, almost all of his patients walked away severely maimed, and a few even wound up dead. And from my understanding, the types of spinal procedures he was performing were fairly standard or even basic. Also, the people around him during these surgeries said that he laid out and knew what he was supposed to do and then just didn’t do it. But before I get into more of that, the show itself opens up on patient Madeline Bayer, who went in for an elective surgery to remove a disc to rid her of back pain and ended up in more pain and ultimately paralyzed.
Dr. Robert Henderson was called in to try and correct Duntsch’s botched surgery, but there was only so much he could do. This did however, spawn his and fellow doctor Randall Kirby, to seek out punishment for Duntsch. They slowly start putting pieces together and found that he maimed almost everyone he worked on and killed two of his patients (or victims, really). There were plenty of people around him that knew he was crap at his job, yet he never got reported. And it can be hard to prove that what he was doing was intentionally malicious rather than just human error. That’s what lawyer Michelle Shughart tried to prove as she agreed to take Henderson and Kibry’s case to trial.
Rather than get into any more specifics for fear of ruining the entertainment of the show, I’ll stop there. It is truly some great television, but also some horrific tragedy for those folks forever impacted by what Duntsch did to them or their loved ones. Honestly, by the time I was done watching the final episode, I got the same feeling I had after watching Chernobyl. The fact that something as awful as this happened for so long in real life gave me the willies. Thankfully that scumbag is in jail for a long time, but that can’t make up for the damage he caused while he was practicing. Sadly, I’m sure there are more like him out there, but I hope this show brings about some reform in the hospital systems so people like Duntsch get stopped sooner. Excellent show!