Damn. Just Damn.
Sometimes we get a fun “Docs Gone Wild” story. Like when ER docs dose students with ketamine for rectal exams, catheter practice, and deliberate exsanguination into shock “in the warehouse.” Or who give a state medical board-sanctioned “Jesus Shot.” Or who fraudulently inseminate. Or try to poison a significant other. Or ski rage. Or decide cancer is a good reason to become a legend on the way out.
Or when some of us just want to playfully show a little skin.
But sometimes, damn, just damn. A doctor in northern Virginia has been convicted of “flooding” the region with over a million oxycontin pills over the past decade. Described as “elderly,” probably at the behest of her lawyer, 68-year-old Kirsten Van Steenberg Ball
was convicted on 2- counts and is staring down the barrel of what will amount to life in prison.
“Before her home office was raided by FBI agents last year, Ball had been reprimanded by Virginia health authorities in 2015 after an investigation into her lax prescribing habits.”
How could someone be so …
*** WE INTERUPT THIS RANT FOR THE USUAL YET IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: THE “WAR ON DRUGS” IS STUPID, A FAILURE, UTTERLY UNWINABLE, AND SERVES NOT TO PREVENT ABUSE AND ADDICTION PROBLEMS, BUT ONLY TO CURTAIL CIVIL LIBERTIES OF THOSE WHO SHOULD BE LEFT THE HELL ALONE. WE ALSO REMIND THE READER THAT THE IMMORAL IDIOCIES OF THE MODERN BUREAUCRATIC STATE AND ITS MYRIAD LEGAL TRAPS IN NO WAY JUSTIFY AN INDIVIDUAL STUPIDLY MAKING OF THEMSELVES A TARGET UNNECESSARILY. WE NOW RETURN TO OUR REGUARLY SCHEDULED DERISION ***
… freaking stupid as to continue in highly suspicious behavior for another eight years, knowing that they were being targeted?
And stupid Dr. Ball most certainly was. She grossly, grossly overwrote narcotics. She forged documentation. She ignored warnings that some of her junkies were themselves selling on the street. She accepted in-kind payments from her junkies, and including her former office manager, several of which took plea deals to roll over on her. She wrote narcotics for those who failed drug tests. Her license was temporarily suspended and she had to take 20 hours of controlled substance training before it was reactivated. And she went right back to it.
“In one week in 2019, Ball prescribed more than 700 pills of 30-miligram oxycodone” to her former manager. She even prescribed 180 oxycodone pills to a patient she had already discharged from her practice.
“The undercover FBI agent testified that while posing as a mover and landscaper who suffered from back pain, he told Ball on several occasions that he would take oxycodone pills that had been prescribed to his father or aunt. Ball told him that was a felony (my emphasis). ‘I’m not writing that down,” she said in a recorded call played in court. ‘Don’t tell anybody else.’
‘My secret’s safe with you,’ the agent said.” I wish that agent had been assigned to the men’s room detail at the local airport.
Anyone, no matter how sleazy, who has had cable or internet access over the past decade should recognize that the FBI has become the U.S. Gestapo and will ruthlessly fabricate, set up, entrap, and/or assault is made up of hardworking, dedicated individuals who will pursue justice using the highest ideals and ethical practices with compassionate determination. Of course, they got her.
Was Ball deserving of the honorific “Doc Gone Wild,” or just stupid? Her pattern puts arrogance in the differential, something that made her feel somehow above it all. Her lawyer said that she was “played like a fiddle,” saying patients called her “kind…compassionate.” Or maybe it was plain ol’ apathy, just looking at her spot in the world and no longer giving a damn, which makes it easier to take the cash. I don’t know.
I do know that I don’t feel sorry for Ball, and I don’t feel sorry for all of her junkies. They all knew what they were doing, and they rolled their own dice. And I don’t have anything nice to say about DA’s and undercover agents who run around feathering their own caps while hiding behind veneers of public service, using scum like Ball to justify harassing honest physicians and further intruding into all of our lives.
I do feel sorry for all of the truly suffering chronic pain patients who will have that much more difficulty getting needed relief. And I do feel sorry for all of us who will have that much more scrutiny, and added obstacles, even though we did nothing wrong.
Pat, keep this “Gone Wild” series going, you are doing a fantastic job!! Apparently lots of fodder out their to pull from. Unbelievable.
So now I’m going back to look at all the Docs Gone Wild! The dude performing all the “penile nerve blocks” and obsessed with circumcisions – wow! And the alligator guy (hahaha!!). Good job!