Dr. Anthony Youn

We keep her overnight in the hospital, which at that time I was doing routinely.

And then the next morning I saw her and she was doing great.

And I sent her home.

The weekend goes by and Monday I get to my office and I have a message from her daughter.

And the message was, why did my mom die?

And it I mean, I was absolutely floored.

I had this nausea in the pit of my stomach.

I had I like literally couldn't form words.

And I got I eventually got on the phone with her and she said, my mom died on Saturday.

Like what happened?

I had I hadn't heard anything.

so it turns out that she suddenly died um that saturday so like the two days like literally after her operation and i went to her chart and i looked and like what happened here i tried to find something that could have caused this was there a medication error was there medication interaction was there something about her health history that i didn't catch and there was nothing like nothing that i could find

It turns out when her autopsy came back later on, she had a massive heart attack.

Even though I had cleared her from a cardiologist standpoint, I did everything.

The only thing I could have done to prevent this was just not operate on her.

So this sent me into a complete tailspin.

And for months, I considered quitting medicine altogether.

I considered choosing a different, going back to residency, finding some other type of a way to practice medicine.

And I really questioned everything that I was taught.

And it got me into thinking, finally, when I hit rock bottom and I just, you know, I prayed to God, like, you know, what do I do?