Amazing Medical Stories (15 page)

Dr. MacDonald, among a number of other observers, recognized that something strange was going on in the small South Shore community about two hundred kilometers from Halifax. In fact, the word bizarre probably best describes what was happening.

Just how Stephen Weaver managed to convince Lockeport town officials that he was a fully qualified physician with a licence to practice in Nova Scotia is not known. It appears that his debonair personality, smart grooming and good looks played a significant role in the deception. Dr. Stephen Woolf, a British physician who had come to Lockeport in February 1979, a short time before Weaver's arrival, found himself working closely with the town's other newcomer. Both men were daily seeing many patients, and it didn't take long before Dr. Woolf began to question Weaver's medical competence. “He saw all sorts of patients, mostly just routine work, but some quite serious,” Woolf told a reporter later. “He was making a lot of mistakes, but nothing that made me think he was a fake.”

Despite any medical shortcomings Weaver may have displayed, he convinced the administration staff at the Roseway Hospital in Shelburne, a town close to Lockeport, to grant him full privileges. This included the right to admit and treat patients, to assist in the operating room and to apply casts and suture wounds.

Weaver made a name for himself in the community within days of his arrival. His patients adored him and did everything to help his wife and two daughters adjust to a rural lifestyle. The pastor at one of the town's churches became one of many who viewed Weaver as a highly competent and dedicated physician. “Money wasn't his objective,” the pastor said. “Dr. Weaver loved medicine, loved helping people.”

Because he did not have a licence to practise medicine in Nova Scotia and therefore had no billing number, Weaver attempted to fund his illegal activities by charging his patients for only the percentage of medical payments not covered, at that time, by the province's health insurance plan, fifteen per cent of the total fee. This meagre compensation meant that he was earning only a couple of hundred dollars a week, although he was seeing a large number of patients every day. It was not enough money to cover his expenses, and, faced with the implications of his inadequate income, Weaver made a big mistake – he applied for provincial health insurance payments. At the same time, a pharmacist in Lockeport had become
concerned about the appropriateness of his prescribing habits and was raising questions about Weaver's credibility. The investigations revealed that Weaver had never graduated from any medical school in the United States. There was further alarming evidence that he had also posed as a qualified physician while working at a clinic in a ghetto area of Washington, D.C.

Weaver's fraud came to an abrupt end on April 10, 1979. On that day, the RCMP arrived at his door and, under the Medical Act of Nova Scotia, formally charged him with practising medicine without a licence. They also charged him with criminal negligence, assault causing bodily harm and possession of the drug Demerol for purposes of trafficking.

News of Weaver's arrest created chaos in Lockeport. Less than twenty-four hours later, the mayor appeared on television to warn residents against taking any medications that had been prescribed by Dr. Weaver. Some panic-stricken townsfolk immediately threw their prescriptions down the drain and began to besiege the town pharmacist and Dr. Woolf, the sole remaining physician. They wanted someone to assure them that their lives were not endangered. Provincial newspapers headlined stories of the humiliating fiasco, and some of the patients who had been seeing Weaver began to experience an array of symptoms, including dizzy spells, headaches and nausea. One woman declared, “He's caused us a lot of trouble!”

But others who had been Weaver's patients didn't share this hysteria. They were furious that the mayor had created widespread fear by issuing a warning. They contended that his action was totally unwarranted, and many of them simply refused to believe that Weaver was not a qualified physician.

What these people did not know was that their hero's lack of medical expertise had been creating anxiety among the medical establishment in the area for some time. Dr. Woolf had grown very concerned about Weaver's performance, and not long before his arrest, he had reported an incident to Dr. Frank Markus, the county's only surgeon. Woolf had consulted Dr. Markus after learning that Weaver had informed one of his patients that he was suffering from bladder cancer when it was clear the man's symptoms were caused by a simple inguinal hernia. Drs. Woolf and Markus were planning to raise their concerns at a medical meeting to be
held after the Easter holidays. The law mercifully intervened a few days before that could happen.

After his arrest, Weaver was incarcerated in the Shelburne County Jail. His wife, Sandi, who apparently had never doubted that her husband was a qualified physician, suddenly found herself destitute. Within twenty-four hours of her husband's arrest, the landlord advised her that he wanted the family out of their rented home. To make matters worse, a local bank froze her husband's account and seized his car. Left with only two dollars to her name, Sandi Weaver was devastated and felt totally abandoned. Fortunately, people in the close-knit community responded. They bought groceries, collected a thousand dollars and found a small cottage where she and her daughters could live.

Meanwhile, the jailed but unrepentant Weaver was telling his story to reporters and others. This dramatic episode in his life clearly revealed that he was a man with an enormous ego. Interviewed at the jail, only a short distance from the community of Lockeport where he had hung out his shingle, Weaver told a reporter, “From the point of book knowledge, I know more than most doctors. What I lacked was practical knowledge, and this I gained in Lockeport. I feel I am qualified.”

According to Weaver, he was the son of a full-blood Comanche Indian father and an Irish-American mother. At the age of two, he said, he had been adopted by a Jacksonville, Florida, couple, and he received his early education in that state. Although an RCMP investigation failed to show that he had ever attended university, Weaver insisted that he had been enrolled at Jacksonville University, where, he claimed, he had often been on the dean's list. He also alleged that he had once earned $30,000 a year as a computer salesman, but that he had always dreamed of becoming a physician.

In an article that appeared in the June 21, 1979 issue of
The Barometer
, a now-defunct Halifax weekly, he told a reporter, “I chose to practise as a doctor because I feel I have an innate ability. This was not a spur of the moment decision. I prepared myself very carefully. I began by writing to the University of North Dakota's Medical School. I bought the required books and studied their curriculum. Having mastered all the theory, I had to find a way into practice.” To put the theory that he claimed to have mastered into practice, he had contacted the Alberta Medical Association
asking for rural medical vacancies, “specifically, places where no other doctors would want to go.”

The secretary at the AMA who sent Weaver a list of rural vacancies had circled Lockeport and added a note in the margin advising him that the town had been looking for a doctor for more than two years. Weaver was only too happy to take advantage of the community's dilemma. Asked if he felt any remorse for his deception, Weaver replied, “Why should I? I lied to no one. I volunteered no information about myself, and I was never asked at any time if I was a doctor.” When asked to explain how he could possibly defend the charade he had orchestrated, he replied, “In the two months that I practised in Lockeport, I learned more than most interns learn in a year in a hospital because I saw a wide range of ages and a variety of ailments. I saw eleven hundred people in that space of time. I'm glad I did it. It was a great experience, very enlightening.”

When questioned about the wisdom of suturing patients when he had no medical training, Weaver told an interrogating RCMP officer that he had practised on grapefruit. Asked just how long he had expected to get away with the deception, Weaver, who reportedly had become more and more arrogant, said, “If I'd been the only doctor in Lockeport, as I'd expected to be, I could have gotten away with it indefinitely!”

On May 29, 1979, Stephen Weaver, who had pleaded guilty to practising medicine without a licence and to the charge of possessing the drug Demerol for the purpose of trafficking, had his final day in court. He received a five-hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence.

Everything about Weaver's short stay in Lockeport and his impact on the people in the small town was extraordinary. His charismatic personality was dramatically illustrated during the time he spent in the Shelburne County Jail. Other inmates were so impressed with his “performance” and the wonderful fiction he spun that they somehow managed to establish a bail fund for him.

Weaver's scam proved to be such titillating news that even the
National Enquirer
gave his escapades coverage in one of its June 1979 issues. He was still in jail when the tabloid ran a column featuring his picture with the caption, “‘Doctor' Weaver treats a young patient while he was in the Canadian fishing village of Lockeport.” The story was headlined “Phony doc is jailed – but his ‘patients' want him back.”

In mid-July of 1979, Weaver was released from prison and deported back to the United States. No one seems to know what happened to “Doc” Weaver, although he did tell friends that he had applied for admission to the University of Colorado Medical School.

Long after Weaver's ignominious departure, many of his supporters continued to believe that he was a real doctor. In a story featured in the
New York Star
, the pastor who had been one of his staunchest supporters told a reporter that if Stephen Weaver were to return to Nova Scotia, many Lockeport residents would see him again because “here was a man who really loved small-town folk, and the love he gave was returned in equal measure.”

No doubt. “Doc” Weaver would not have been surprised in the least to learn of this display of lasting admiration for the brief but unforgettable time he had spent in the community. This vote of confidence would simply have justified his firmly held conviction that he had been “one of the best doctors” the town ever had.

Dorothy Grant

In late 1992, when the Yarmouth Regional Hospital successfully recruited Norris Jagnandan, a physician from the southern United States, staff members were jubilant. For years, the facility had been plagued with understaffing at its twenty-four-hour emergency and outpatient department. Desperate to find a general practitioner to help cover outpatient rotations, the hospital had first advertised across Canada and then in the United States. Only three physicians had responded.

When their first choice backed out, Dr. Jagnandan, a forty-three-year-old physician who appeared to have an impressive background in emergency medicine, was considered. Several of his references were contacted, and the hospital heard only glowing reports of his moral character and medical acumen.

Early in September 1992, Dr. Norris Jagnandan's name was entered into the Medical Register in Nova Scotia. A short time later, along with a Finnish woman identified as his wife, Tuula, he moved to Yarmouth, where he established a practice and obtained a mortgage to purchase a home with frontage on picturesque Lake Milo.

The story might well have ended here except for the fact that Dr. Jagnandan quickly developed a disturbing reputation. There were allegations that he was often rude to his patients and arrogant to the hospital nursing staff, and there was growing evidence that his medical skills were, to say the least, deficient. In December 1993, the hospital had acquired a long string of serious, documented complaints about his attitude and medical care, and he had failed to respond to a warning that his status was at considerable risk. Therefore, the hospital suspended Dr. Jagnandan's privileges. The same month, the hospital followed appropriate protocol by
advising the Provincial Medical Board (PMB) of the punitive step it had taken.

At about the same time, another hospital in Nova Scotia had contacted the board seeking information on a certain Dr. Norris Jagnandan, who had applied for privileges at their institution. They were advised not to proceed with his application until the board had time to conduct a further examination. What that examination revealed could be the makings of a best-selling book; on January 26, 1994, the PMB revoked Dr. Jagnan-dan's licence to practise medicine in Nova Scotia.

Dr. Norris Rajkumar Jagnandan graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in 1980. Soon after graduation, he spent three years with a United States army health clinic. This chapter of his medical career came to an end in 1983 when he was the subject of a general court martial and subsequently lost his clinical privileges. In 1987, Dr. Jagnandan was again in trouble when he had to surrender his medical licence in North Carolina after that state's Medical Board became aware of his army court martial.

Barely two years had passed when Dr. Jagnandan was again the subject of an investigation. In 1989, his licence to practise medicine in Georgia was suspended for “unprofessional conduct.” It was subsequently reinstated and then suspended again in December 1991 in relation to the inappropriate prescribing of drugs and other substances. Evidence was later produced that he had traded drugs or prescriptions for high-quality Scotch and, on one occasion, for a set of golf clubs. There were further allegations of sexually related professional misconduct. Dr. Jagnandan had little choice but to sign an agreement with the state medical board that, pending a hearing to investigate allegations of serious professional misconduct, he would not practise in that state. But the disgraced physician was already plotting a way out of his dilemma.

To avoid a possible jail sentence, he decided to beat a hasty retreat out of Georgia; a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. He cleverly orchestrated a flight to Canada, where he hoped he could avoid retribution from American authorities. In fact, not long after he was accused of participating in criminal activities, the doctor was practising in Yarmouth, where he believed his sordid past would never be discovered.