What if they'd said, "Tell us more, let's figure this out."?

What if they'd said,

Written 8/13/25 for an article by Communication Intelligence The Pain and Trauma of Being Disbelieved


I value and appreciate our medical community, and when things go wrong, people need to be helped, not silenced.

In 2021, I was injured to the point of disablement by an abusive surgeon. During our first follow-up appointment after elbow surgery, with no warning, he repetitively grabbed my hand and arm, violently forcing them beyond the range of motion that I was capable of at that time. The result was near head-to-toe injuries, including nerve entrapment and CRPS.

I left the surgeon’s office in a state of shock. Traumatized, it took me a full week to gather the courage to make the call to report him, which led to many months of trying to get help from the hospital corporation - a sprawling network of hospitals and offices across Ohio.

I was sure there had to be, must be, yes - there just had to be someone who would listen, investigate, and make sure he couldn’t hurt more people. But there wasn’t. Instead, there were unresponsive administrators aside from a gatekeeper who said it was decided, without any investigation, that the surgeon did nothing wrong. The hospital washed its hands of me.

Because of Ohio’s tort reform laws, I could find no lawyer who would take my case, leaving me effectively locked out of the justice system. Being dismissed from the hospital with no recourse was as bad or worse than the physical pain. The ensuing financial devastation from not being able to work and losing my home made it all the more devastating.

Which brings me to a question: What if the hospital administration had been appropriately concerned and said, “Tell us more. Let’s figure this out.”? Can you imagine the immediate impact that response would have on an injured patient? That sure would have been nice. More than nice–an act of basic decency. There still would have been plenty to work through, but without the added layers of trauma from the go pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps version.

While I was being swallowed up by suffocating injustice, I understood that the systems weren’t going to change their ways for me. If I had any hope of moving on, I had to be the one to evolve. This had me very scared because my healing had stalled from the weight of depression and obsession. I felt my days were numbered, yet I didn’t have a clue how to save myself.

A Turning Point

I am happy to report that I figured it out!

There were a number of events and realizations that led up to a turning point where I finally found relief. I’ll jump right to the main thing that I want you to hear if you are struggling under the weight of bitter feelings over almost any situation.

As I said, I knew I had to be the one to evolve. And as luck would have it, one day it hit me that I needed to focus on and care more about my well-being than on my obsession with injustice. This sounds logical and almost too simplistic, but it was earth-shattering to me in that lightbulb moment when I got it that I didn’t have to completely get over the situation to begin to heal and move on. I didn’t have to meditate for the next hundred years so that I could learn to forgive; I just had to decide to focus more on doing and thinking things that felt better than things that felt bad.

It took some practice putting myself first. I’d easily forget and soon be off on another tangent and feeling awful, but eventually I started to catch and redirect my attention, just like you’d do with a toddler who is drawn to the deep end of a pool.

The payoff was big. I began to feel such relief and a coming back into myself. Physical healing started to kick into gear and my senses that had been deadened began to wake up. I still had tough days, but they weren’t consuming me nearly as often or to the degree that they had. I’ve carried this practice into daily life where the stakes aren’t usually as high, thank goodness, because caring about my well-being has become a habit.

And now, back to the question, would it have killed the hospital administrators to have said, “Tell us more. Let’s figure this out.”? Could they have found the capacity to acknowledge their injured patient? That would have been too easy for me, and I’d have missed out on this painful opportunity for personal growth and to share what I learned. Maybe I should tell them thank you for kicking me to the curb? Let’s not get carried away.

Liz Florentino, author of Angels, Bullies, & Brick Walls: Lessons from Surviving Medical Malpractice, is a patient rights advocate focused on raising awareness about provider accountability and tort reform laws that discriminate against those harmed by malpractice.