Collateral Damage: A Patient, a New Procedure and the Learning Curve

The Whole Truth

With the jury out of the room, Pam and I were called to the bench. Hopkins’s lawyers stood to our left, Pam’s lawyer stood to our right.

The judge told my wife that when she took the stand to testify, she was not to refer to any aspect of  the  procedure. She was not to make any reference to her injuries. She was not to say anything about how she was injured. She was not to say anything about how a catheter got tangled in her mitral valve. She was not to say anything about who was operating the catheter when that happened.

Under no circumstances was she to refer to the procedure as being experimental or investigational. She was not to say anything about how Hugh Calkins described her as being “collateral damage.” …