My Surgeon Ghosted Me Mid-Surgery, So Now I’m Just A Walking HR Violation
Look, I get it. We’ve all been ghosted. You text a Tinder match something mildly interesting, and they vanish into the ether like a fart in the wind. It’s a rite of passage in the modern dating hellscape. But there’s a big difference between getting left on “read” after suggesting Chili’s for a first date, and getting left on the operating table with your chest cracked open like a Tupperware container of last week’s leftovers.
Yet, here I am. Or, more accurately, here I *was*. Because for a solid 45 minutes last Tuesday, I was technically a human-shaped croissant, split open and cooling on a stainless steel tray in St. Augustine’s Memorial Hospital, while my surgeon, Dr. Marcus Webb, allegedly peaced out to go yell at his ex-wife on the phone.
I’m not making this up. I wish I was. I really, really wish I was making this up, because the alternative means my gallbladder is currently held in place by a prayer, some surgical glue, and the sheer willpower of a nursing staff that probably deserves a raise and a lifetime supply of Xanax.
Let’s rewind. I went in for a routine laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Fancy doctor words for “get the angry little organ out before it explodes and ruins my 30s.” Standard stuff. Sign the waiver, put on the sexy hospital gown that shows off your entire backside, and get the happy juice that makes you forget you’re about to be stabbed by a tiny robot camera.
I’m out cold. The anesthesiologist does his thing. Dr. Webb makes the first incision. He’s inflating my abdomen with gas (sexy). He’s inserting the camera. Everything is going according to the $47,000 plan. Then, about 20 minutes in, the nurses say his phone, which was supposedly on silent in his lab coat pocket, starts vibrating like a possessed beetle.
Apparently, he glanced at it. Then he frowned. Then he stepped back from the table and said, and I quote from the nurse’s official report that I filed a FOIA request for, “I have to take this.”
LMAO. “I have to take this.” In the middle of a surgery. On a living, breathing, insured human being. He just dipped. The circulating nurse, a saint named Brenda with the patience of Job and the arms of a WWE wrestler, said she tried to stop him. She told him the patient (me) was prepped and open. Dr. Webb allegedly replied, “Just keep the site clean, I’ll be right back. It’s my ex-wife. She’s trying to garnish my wages for the boat.”
The boat. He ghosted my open abdomen to fight about a *boat*.
So for the next 45 minutes, I’m lying there, unconscious, with a camera inside me, while the scrub nurse, the circulating nurse, and a very confused med student who was probably also on the hook for his student loans, just stood there. They couldn’t close me up. They’re not *surgeons*. They could keep the site sterile and monitor my vitals, but they couldn’t finish the job. They literally had to put a sterile drape over my open guts and just… wait. Like a forgotten pizza in the breakroom.
I woke up in recovery to a very different vibe than expected. No smiling face telling me it went well. Just a nurse with a tight smile who asked if I wanted Jell-O. The surgeon, Dr. Webb, finally showed up four hours later. He didn’t apologize. He said, and this is the part that’s going to make my malpractice lawyer buy a second summer house, “We had a slight communication delay. The procedure was a success, but I want to schedule a follow-up to make sure the internal stitching is secure.”
Internal stitching? *Internal stitching?* I was supposed to be glued and taped like a Kintsugi pottery project. The guy literally did the last 15% of the surgery in a hurry, probably while still fuming about the boat, and now I have a scar that looks less like a keyhole and more like a zipper on a duffel bag.
The hospital is now trying to offer me a “complimentary follow-up consultation” and a parking validation. My lawyer says we have a case. The hospital administration says they’re “reviewing the surgeon’s schedule.” The surgeon is on “administrative leave,” which is hospital-speak for “we’re changing the locks on the breakroom.”
And the best part? The internet. I made the mistake of posting about this on a local Facebook mom group, asking for lawyer recommendations. The comments are a beautiful dumpster fire. Half the boomers are defending the surgeon. “Doctors are overworked! You don’t know his personal situation! Maybe the ex-wife was being crazy!”
Oh, I’m sorry, did his ex-wife’s craziness make my bile duct look like a Jackson Pollock painting? Did his “personal situation” require him to leave a literal hole in my body so he could go argue about the slip payment on a 22-foot Bayliner? I don’t care if his ex-wife was holding his dog hostage and threatening to shave it. You do not walk away from a patient who is actively being laparoscopically disemboweled.
One lady commented, “Well, you signed a consent form. You know surgery has risks.” Yes, Karen. I consented to the risk of infection, the risk of bleeding, the risk of anesthesia complications. I did not consent to the risk of my doctor having a mid-procedure mental breakdown over alimony. That’s not in the fine print. That’s a new level of “unforeseen circumstances.”
So now I’m at home, high on Percocet, typing this with one hand while holding an ice pack to my Frankenstein scar with the other. I’m starting a GoFundMe to pay for the therapy I’ll
Final Thoughts
After reading the article, it’s clear that surgery remains a brutal, elegant paradox: a controlled trauma designed to heal. We like to think of it as pure science, but the scalpel’s edge is guided by a deeply human judgment call, weighing probabilities against a patient’s singular anatomy. Ultimately, the best outcomes don’t just come from a steady hand in the OR, but from the quiet, unglamorous work of deciding *when* not to cut.