A woman in Texas secretly recorded her surgeon making rude comments about her while performing her operation.
When Ethel Easter first found out that she would have to wait two months to schedule a hernia surgery at the hospital, she immediately started crying.
“I was like, 'I can’t wait for two months.' I’m terribly ill, and he said 'listen' he got very abrupt. He said 'who do you think you are? You have to wait just like everybody else',” she told Fox 26.
After seeing how cold her surgeon could be, Easter decided to hide a recording device in her hair on the day of her operation, in hopes of catching him in the act.
“This is my natural hair I had a weave at the time which is braid extensions and when I put my hair up I put the recorder right in my hair,” Easter explained.
When she finally heard the shocking recording, Easter was even more disgusted than ever before by the surgeon’s callous behavior.
As Fox 26 reports, almost immediately after Easter starts snoring on the recording, the surgeon can be heard telling everybody else in the OR what he really thinks of her.
Take a look at the jaw-dropping conversation below:
Surgeon: “She’s a handful she had some choice words for us in the clinic when we didn’t book her case in two weeks.”
Male Voice: “Really”
Surgeon: “I’m going to call a lawyer and file a complaint” (laughter)
Male voice: “That doesn’t seem like the thing to say to the person whose going to do your surgery”
Surgeon: “Yea”
As if those alarming comments weren’t already enough to hurt Easter, the rest of the staff in the OR can also be heard making fun of their unconscious patient, particularly about her body:
Female Voice: “Did you see her belly button?”
Second Male: "Precious meet Precious."
According to Easter, “It was Precious meet Precious, as though I was this big fat black woman.”
After making fun of her for a little while longer, the surgeon then says he feels sorry for Easter’s husband.
“When I heard the comments on the tape and listened to them I was shocked,” said community activist Quanell X. “I had no idea that doctors, anesthesiologists and nurses would carry themselves in this manner in an operating room.”
Although a spokesman for Harris Health System, which oversees hospitals in the county, refused to comment on Easter’s particular case, he did admit in a letter that the staff will now be reminded of proper behavior in the OR.
