Yesterday I reached out to our attorney after an article was published about our beloved Dr. Raj. In my last post I told you I felt like something fishy was going on. I knew more and still know more than I'm comfortable publically sharing, but as a patient Jonathan and I are very very unhappy about what has happened here. At our last infusion Jonathan and I were told that Raj just resigned and left. We know Raj well enough to know he would never do that to us. Well at least not without talking to us about it and explaining circumstances and ensuring our care and information was being handled properly.
On Monday night I had a friend contact me and send me a spokesman review article. This article basically stated that Raj lied about passing his boards and forged documents stating such. It has an interview of his employer and owner of the practice sharing all the details of the report he had filed with the medical commission. Now I understand that IF in fact Dr. Raj had lied and forged documents, that would be something an employer would and should report to the medical commission. BUT there are some major problems here for us as patients. Jonathan and I as you know do our due diligence. We went and actually found the case at the Washington State health department website filed against Dr. Raj. This document states the Raj was hired in 2013. At that time Dr. Raj verbally claimed he had passed his boards. In 2014 he was asked to provide documentation of such, he then provided a forged document because he again failed his boards for a second time in 2014. He also provided a forged philosophy degree from Rutgers. So Jonathan and I of course just went looking further online to see if Raj did in fact pass his boards. It took less than 5 minutes for us to find this information online. Dr. Raj passed his internal medicine boards in 2010 and his medical oncology boards in 2015.
Now here are some red flags we have with this entire situation. We may know more about this situation than the average joe as Jonathan's job was to provide loans to people. He specialized in physician loans and often read physician contracts. It is rare for a doctor coming out of med school to have passed their boards. It is typically written into a contract with a time frame. He said normally it is 3 years. Sometimes 7 years. AND as we understand, you legally don't even have to pass your boards to practice. You just can't claim to be board certified and I'm assuming that makes a difference in a physicians pay. So it seems fishy to us that Raj would even need to have to lie in 2013 that he passed his boards. No practice would expect a dr. right out of med school to have passed those already. Next about a forged document, why would a employer ask an employee for this document or just rely on their word without calling the state to verify? It took us less than 5 minutes to find in state records when he passed his test. Red Flag. This is just my opinion but this doesn't seem plausible. But maybe I'm missing facts about this process? Lastly why would he need to lie about a philosophy degree? That isn't even related to his medical degree.
Nevertheless, now there is this news article out there that many of Raj's patients are getting tagged on through social media. Saying "hey isn't this your Doctor?" As if being in the middle of a cancer battle isn't stress enough? Now we have people all over our town gossiping about if we were getting proper care without even knowing our doctor or the entire story by doing their due diligence. It is hurtful and adding extra stress. Which raises the question how did the Spokaneman even know about this? To find this report on the health department website we had to actually type in Raj's full name. So are you telling me staff at the spokesman are typing in every doctors name in our area? No Way! Someone gave them that report! Then the owner of the practice proceeded to comment telling all the details about what he turned Raj in for. As a patient of his practice, we feel he should have said Raj is a good doctor and all of his patients were in good care and beyond that, I have no comment. Instead he is causing patient panic by making them think they had an unqualified doctor who is a liar and didn't pass proper tests. No offense but less educated people out there may jump to a conclusion that a doctor not board certified is unfit to practice completely unaware that it is common for doctors to not pass boards 1, 2 and 3 tries around. AND that you don't even legally need to pass boards to practice. It is leading the public to believe something horrible happened when in fact the mistake made here would be only a lie that put no one in danger. He made a mistake and the commission will take appropriate action. But he still gave amazing care.
Now we are patients feeling like we are out in the wind without a doctor days before we have the biggest scan of our lives. Raj was not given the opportunity to transition his patients and new doctors were not given the opportunity to get fully briefed on each case. Shoot as Jonathan went in for the scan, he had to stop the nurse to ask if his kidneys were at a safe level to handle the dye. No doctor had looked at his labs, so the scan was delayed as the nurse found a practitioner to check the lab results. This wouldn't have happened had we had a doctor closely monitoring our care! So on Tuesday Jonathan changed his appointment to a doctor we researched and knew was better equipped to handle Jonathan's case. So long story short (or long) this Dr. Raj thing is really messed up. I want to believe he didn't lie, I just don't think he would. He is a good person. But I also know people make mistakes, and even IF he did, this has been handled entirely inappropriately. I mean these are peoples lives, and yes we are upset about it!
So, the new doctor. Actually we feel very confident in our new doctor. We had actually researched him when jonathan was first diagnosed 2 years ago. At the time he had a practice in post falls and is known for his sarcoma research. We did not go to him then because we felt that we wanted to get chemo in Spokane, and this doctor did not have privileges at Sacred Heart. Because we had great doctors in Seattle we could work with doctors in Spokane and all work together. Medical Oncology Associates has since purchased Doctor Samuals practice our of Post Falls. So now we will be traveling to post Falls to see this doctor. If there is an emergency and we land in the Spokane hospital we will simply have to be in the care of a hospitalist and personally work with dr. samuals over the phone I guess.
We did see Doctor Samuals today and felt very comfortable with him. He was very knowledgeable about Jonathan's type of cancer and the complexity of the trial drugs. He even had our plan C ready. So here is how the scans went...
Reading scans with immunotherapy is very complicated. The imaging technology has not caught up with the treatment. Typically with chemo if a tumor has grown it would indicate that treatment isn't working. With immune therapy, especially in the first few scans growth can be good or bad. It can mean it isn't working or it can mean it is filling with immune type cells causing swelling and is working.
We were expecting to see growth in his hip and in fact there is growth. Dr. Samuals feels like he is also seeing some death within the tumor. He said there is one new spot on Jonathan's lung and now a lymph in his abdomen showing growth. This is tricky because the new spot on his lung could have already been there but too small to see on a scan. Now that it might be "swelling" it is visible on a scan. Or it could just be new! Typically osteosarcoma does not spread to lymph so it could be something that isn't cancer, or it could be.
We personally feel like these are positive scan results. We know that in 1 month from July to August he went from no mets on his lungs to 6 spots. He has now gone 4 months with new 1 spot. We know this is fast growing so to see this result we would like to think this means a stable scan at the very least.
This new doctor said they are seeing positive results in adding another immune therapy drug to the Keytruda. So we are applying for another compassionate use and will hopefully be adding another immunotherapy drug in conjunction with Keytruda. We have already spoke to Dr. Wang at Baylor and she feels like we should stay the course and feels that adding this other immunotherapy drug is a good idea. There is one bad thing... She said her trial will most likely be closed in a few months as the final spots are filling up. So, now that we aren't joining the trial, it may not be there as a plan B if our next scan is bad. But it might be.
So to conclude, there have been no tears today. I did set the garbage can at me feet during the appointment just incase. But I made it through without throwing up. I can not tell you how incredibly hard this is on those scan days. So now we can go back to pretending we have a wonderful life until the next scan 3 months from now! I can not thank you enough for all the prayers. Jax's teacher asked me the other day how I was even up right... I told her God just gives us enough grace each day. I feel that is because of all of you praying.
I had someone post this on my wall over a year ago. But after this week we've had I've thought this many times. Jonathan and I even both admitted we had thoughts that we sort of hoped the plane would crash on the way home. At least we would all be together. This is absolutely no fun, and God is pushing me to my limit, we will just leave it at that!
