Ex-patient of arrested Taylor doctor: 'How many lives did he ruin?'
TAYLOR, Mich. (FOX 2) - A 78-year-old doctor with a clinic in Taylor is accused of allegedly overprescribing painkillers, and medication, as well as committing insurance fraud.
"How many times did he ruin somebody's life doing this?" Elizabeth Dew said.
This week, thousands of patients like Dew, a former neurology patient, learned her former doctor had been arrested.
FOX 2 asked, "What was your reaction?"
"I just started crying," she replied.
The doctor is now also under scrutiny for possible sexual misconduct with his patients, which may have occurred in a bizarre bedroom at his clinic.
Dew was referred to the doctor in 2018 after experiencing an episode similar to a fainting spell. She says he diagnosed her with seizures after one test and prescribed medication.
She immediately began to suffer severe side effects from the medication.
"I felt like I was trapped in my body, and I couldn't get out," Dew said.
The medication led to frequent visits to the doctor every couple of weeks for six months.
"I would go and say, 'I can’t be honest; I’m having a bad reaction to it,'" she said. "And so he'd prescribe me something else. It was like every two weeks he would prescribe me something else."
As a result, Dew was unable to drive or work.
"I almost lost everything," she said. "I had to sell my car and almost lost my apartment. I was dead broke."
Related: Secret bedroom found in raided Taylor doctor's office, as 'pill mill' allegations mount
The medication left Dew nearly immobile.
"My grandkids were like 'What's wrong with Nana?' and that broke my heart," she said.
Her family urged her to seek a second opinion, which she received from the Mayo Clinic. Doctors there determined she wasn't having seizures and never had one.
"It was all the medicine that was causing it," she said.
Although she was not prescribed painkillers, she witnessed them being distributed and sold, consistent with what Taylor police have reported.
"People were coming up there and getting their pain pills and selling them right there," she said. "They weren't even leaving the parking lot."
Elizabeth Dew. Inset: Her former doctor in Taylor pictured during his arrest.