A Darkness of Her Own: Living With the Consequences of Medical Malpractice - Softcover

Zarecor, Kenneth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 145023402X ISBN 13: 9781450234023

Verlag: iUniverse, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

A Darkness of Her Own chronicles what happens when a couple's most joyous occasion-the birth of their first child-goes horribly wrong. A riveting personal story and compelling court room drama, it begins on the day that Ken and Lorraine Zarecor meet for the first time. The story follows them through their courtship, marriage, and birth of their only child, Heather-and the shocking and heartbreaking events that followed. Heather suffered severe brain damage at birth. While trying to preserve her life and dignity, her parents encountered many obstacles. The tragedy caused turmoil in their lives and their marriage. They found the medical professionals and governmental agencies largely impotent, intolerant, or unwilling to offer assistance. These failures forced the Zarecors to turn to the courts to discover the cause of Heather's brain damage, to redress the consequences of medical malpractice. Over the course of ten years, they encountered many obstacles, including missing or altered medical records, and attorneys who misstated facts attempting to protect guilty parties. Their goal was to insure that Heather would have the best possible care for the rest of her life, and, in the end, to see that she got justice.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kenneth Zarecor was born in Nebraska. A graduate of Brooklyn College, he lived in New York most of his adult life. Ken enjoyed a long and varied working life, finally retiring from a career as a special education teacher. He currently resides, with his daughter, Heather, in Grand Junction, Colorado.

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A Darkness of Her Own

Living With the Consequences of Medical MalpracticeBy Kenneth Zarecor

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Kenneth Zarecor
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-3402-3

Chapter One

A love of opera brought us together. But the catalyst for our meeting was a wild-haired woman waiting on line in the lobby of the new Metropolitan Opera just after it opened in the fall of 1966.

I'd just recently returned to the United States in the spring of that year after sixteen months in England, where I'd gone to opera, theater, and concerts. In England, I had also indulged a recurring fantasy of mine-to study singing.

I was very excited to get in to see the new theater. The problem was when it opened, there were no tickets of any kind available for several weeks. That was until, according to an opera-fanatic friend, some SRO-standing room only-tickets became available for performances of La Traviata. It took some doing, but I convinced my boss at the Port Authority Bus Terminal to let me extend my thirty-minute lunch break to go to Lincoln Center.

It was a crisp early autumn day in New York, and I rushed uptown on the subway and dashed into the Met's sparkling new home. There were several lines on both sides of the lobby, but no clear indication of what was being sold at any of the windows. I didn't have all day, so I just looked for the shortest line. Thinking I'd hit the jackpot, I found a line that consisted of just two people-a man at the window and a woman on line-on the left side of the lobby. I quickly jumped in that line.

The man at the window was standing on tiptoe, trying to hold onto the ledge with one hand while waving the other hand in the air. Even on tiptoe, he could barely see into the ticket cage, and he kept bumping his head as he moved around trying to adjust his position. The wild hand movements, along with the constant adjustments to his feet, made it appear as though he were doing a dance to the sound of his own voice.

The woman wore glasses that appeared to be at least two inches thick. She kept running one hand through her hair, changing the shape of her hairdo, but doing nothing to tame the large clumps of hair that reappeared as quickly as her hand left her head. In her other hand, she held several sheets of paper, which she kept shuffling around, making a clucking sound with each shuffle. As I waited I snuck a peek at the papers: they were all headed, "Tentative Casting: Metropolitan Opera, 1967-68 Season."

My first inclination was to ask her where she'd gotten the casting lists, and if they were real. But instead I only asked, "Is this the line for tickets?"

"I certainly hope so," she laughed, not looking up. "That's why I'm here."

I glanced at my watch, then back at the window. The man behind the window was making motions as though he were throwing a football. It seemed a little odd. Neither he nor the man on tiptoe seemed to be holding tickets. And there was no sign above the cage to indicate what kinds of transactions took place there.

"How long have you been here?" I nervously asked the woman.

"All my life," she replied, again not looking up from her papers. "I was born here."

"What?" I said. "No. I don't mean in New York, I mean on this line."

"A while already," she replied. "In fact, too long."

I glanced again at my watch, and she finally stopped riffling through the sheets of paper.

"That midget," she said, nodding toward the ticket window and speaking in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the lobby, "has been talking to the ticket man all this time and not one ticket has passed between them. Why don't you go see what those lines on the other side of the lobby are for?"

Her loud comments caused the man behind the window to look up and glare at her. She glared right back at him. "I can tell you right now, Letty," the ticket man hissed, "this line is for subscription returns. The standing room tickets, for you poor slobs that have to stand, are sold on the other side."

I was still new enough to New York City to find this kind of rudeness and confrontation surprising. I hadn't quite figured out how to respond. I only knew that my extended lunch break was nearly over, and I still wasn't even on the right ticket line.

"The midget's name is Donnie," Letty said, taking my arm and leading me across the lobby. "We fight all the time."

She steered me through the large crowd, all the time yelling over her shoulder. "Why don't you get a box to stand on?" she shouted. "You won't have to keep hitting your mouth on the counter." A few people glanced up, but most of the jaded New Yorkers simply ignored the whole scene. "If you keep hitting your mouth on the counter, Donnie, you'll lose all your new false teeth." Letty continued, as though she were addressing a large audience. "He thinks Corelli is the greatest tenor since Caruso. I think his brain stopped growing even before his body did."

Letty let go of my arm when we came to the ticket windows on the righthand side of the lobby. "Well, look who's here!" she exclaimed, pointing in the general direction of one of the lines. I couldn't see clearly to whom she was talking. "So what are you guys here to buy?"

"Hi, Letty," came a cluster of female voices.

"We heard you fighting with Donnie-again," one female voice said.

"More like still fighting with him," said another voice.

"That shmegegge," Letty said, speaking in the direction of the voices, "is always a pain in the tuches."

"Shmegegge?" exclaimed yet another voice. "Tuches? Wow, what kind of a vocabulary is that for a good Catholic girl? The nuns would be horrified!" Several people in the line laughed.

I could now make out that Letty was talking to a group of three women near the end of one of the lines. "So what are you here to buy?" Letty repeated impatiently.

The discussion of the appropriate Yiddish curse for Donnie was not, however, concluded. Another of the women said, "And he's not a shmegegge, you know-more like a shmendrick. He's more of a weasel or pipsqueak. Shmegegge is too mean a word for him, the poor schlemiel. Although, since this is a cultured crowd and mixed company, I guess we should be glad you didn't call him a schmuck!" This speaker had a mass of dark hair and also a fairly massive amount of weight on her body.

Finally getting to Letty's question, one of the women said, "I'm just here with Raven." She was an attractive blonde with smiling blue eyes.

"So am I," added the heavyset woman. "And she's here-"

"She's here," interrupted the third woman, "to beg, borrow, or scrounge two seats to a Frau." This must be Raven. She was petite and had dark eyes, which she held in a calm, steady gaze as she looked at the two of us. Of the three women, Raven was certainly the one that caught second looks. "Maybe you can help me, Letty?"

Maybe I can help with a standing room ticket," Letty said, "but I bet you are looking for a sitting-down ticket, right?"

"Frau?" I asked, somewhat incredulously. "You are talking about Die Frau ohne Schatten? That's sold out, too?"

"Frau is the one real hit of the new season in the new house," the blonde told me. "Don't tell me you don't like Strauss!"

"Oy vey," Letty said. "If I can use an Irish expression my Italian mother always used, I've led this poor Daniel into the lion's den."

"Your name is Daniel?" the heavy girl asked me. "I love Biblical...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: iUniverse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 145023402X
• ISBN 13: 9781450234023
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 216
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland