David Black - Ripped Apart: Living Misdiagnosed: Gary and Carol Sterns Epic Fight Against Malpractice in the American Health Care System

Copyright 2021 by David Black

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Kai Texel

Cover photo credit: Getty Images

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-6265-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6766-9

Printed in the United States of America

Direct quotes are in quote marks. Indirect quotes are underlined. All reportage from the trial is taken directly from the trial transcript and other publicly available court documents.

Some names have been changed.

WORKS BY DAVID BLACK

Novels

Fast Shuffle

The Extinction Event

An Impossible Life

Peep Show

Minds

Like Father

Non-fiction

Medicine Man

Murder at the Met

The King of Fifth Avenue

Ekstasy

Plays

An Impossible Life

Poetry

Mirrors

Films

The Confession

Legacy of Lies

TV

Bluebloods

CopShop

CSI: Miami

The Bedford Diaries

The Education of Max Bickford

Sidney Lumets 100 Centre Street

The Cosby Mysteries

EZ Streets

Law & Order

The Nasty Boys

H.E.L.P.

Gideon Oliver

Miami Vice

Hill Street Blues

For Gary

Acknowledgments from Carol Stern

I would like to thank Gary Stern, my husband, for showing me what unconditional love is.

Jeanette Bishop, my mom, for teaching me there is nothing you cannot accomplish so long as you love and trust in God and yourself and never take no for an answer.

Kenneth Laughlin, my son, for putting his life on hold more times than I can count.

Jade Laughlin, my granddaughter, for getting her Pop Pop (Gary) to smile when no one else could.

Kimberly Romero, my daughter, for all the moral support.

David and Stacey Stern, for always being there for Gary and me.

Donna Forehand, my niece. I was Garys advocate and you were mine.

Miss Janet, Garys home nurse, who was more of a family member than an employee.

Doctor Chun, for your love and understanding with Gary. I will always be indebted to you for the way you took care of my Gary.

Jay Miller, our attorney, for believing in us.

Linda and Rick Shade, my sister and brother-in-law, for your spiritual advice. God Bless you both.

Westview Baptist Church, for all the prayers and donations.

Mike Hagerty for believing in my story and introducing me to David Black.

David Black, the author, for helping me through the worst memories with love and compassion. I am happy to call you my friend.

The most importantGODfor loving Gary and bringing his angels down to help me take care of him.

To everyone who helped me: thank you and I love you all.

God Bless,

Garys Wife

EARLY PRAISE FOR RIPPED APART: LIVING MISDIAGNOSED

Crying. Devastating story, told with restraint. Has the inevitability of a Greek tragedy merged with the granular specificity of a law brief and a medical manualyet somehow told as simply as possibly. Carol is a Greek heroine. You wisely step aside and let the story tell itselfthough thats an illusion because stories dont tell themselvesyou did. You make heroes out of regular suffering folk without hokum or schmaltz.

David Duchovny, actor and writer

David Black is a genius.

Mort Gerberg, New Yorker cartoonist

If you can only read one book before the world ends, this should be the one.

Richard Dreyfuss, actor and writer

David Black is one of a very few writers who can tell a story of outrageous malfeasance without ever letting the outrage drown the plot. Its just one of the reasons I dont want his books to end.

John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harpers Magazine

Ripped Apart: Living Misdiagnosed proves, once again, that David Black is one part sleuth and one part romantic, with a whole lot of style mixed in.

Tom Fontana, creator of the TV series Oz and many others; multiple Emmy winner.

PRAISE FOR DAVID BLACKS PREVIOUS BOOKS

FAST SHUFFLE

Black is a remarkable writer whose command of the hard-boiled and the sweet is matchless, not to mention his characters who embody both. Readers of this book are in for a wild ride from beginning to end with a lot of twists and turns that Black negotiates with elegance.

Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

THE EXTINCTION EVENT

In a room full of tired thrillers and gumshoe capers, David Blacks sensational new book is the life of the party. The Extinction Event sits at the table of Bradbury and Chinatown , Stieg Larsson and CSI .

Graydon Carter, journalist, author, and editor of Vanity Fair

Hardboiled to perfection by a master of narrative alchemy. Here is a thriller yielding philosophical gold.

Frederic Morton, New York Times bestselling author of A Nervous Splendor

LIKE FATHER: A NOVEL

Like Father is written with painful and beautiful understatement.

James Baldwin

David Blacks first novel is full of skill, humor, and humanity. The voice is individual, the dialogue real, the characters three-dimensional. The vision belongs to the great American tradition, but the eye that sees it is wholly original.

Anthony Burgess

I loved it from the first paragraph. Its a rich, complex fascinating book; I ached for the characters and was sorry to say good-bye to them at the end.

Anne Tyler

AN IMPOSSIBLE LIFE

Hilarious!

Czeslaw Milosz, Noble Prize for Literature, 1980

David Blacks An Impossible Life is a brilliant depiction of a Jewish-American family unsparingly portrayed with all its craziness, eccentricity, and wild humor.

Erica Jong

Table of Contents

Trigger Warning

Ripped Apart: Living Misdiagnosed is a love story, a story about how love overcame the horror of a medical malpractice casewhat Gary and Carol Stern went through.