Woman Can`t Close Eyes After Surgery
BEHAR: We make a lot of jokes about plastic surgery. But I think a lot of people forget it is surgery. There are risks. Just ask Marilyn Leisz who says that due to botched surgery, she cannot close her eyes anymore. Here to talk about her experience is Marilyn Leisz along with her attorney, Roy Konray. Welcome to the show. Marilyn, you cannot close your eyes?</s>MARILYN LEISZ: That`s correct.</s>BEHAR: How long has this been going on?</s>LEISZ: Since Dr. Paul Parker`s surgery, since 2005.</s>BEHAR: Oh, my God. That`s a long time.</s>LEISZ: Yes.</s>BEHAR: How do you function?</s>LEISZ: My daily life is not a typical person`s life. I have to -- at night time when I take a shower I have to put in gel into my eyes to protect them from the soap and the water running in there. And then at night time I have to put the vaporizer on, put more steroid creams and put gel into my eye and then put a sleep mask over my eye to protect my eye.</s>BEHAR: It`s a nightmare.</s>LEISZ: Yes it is.</s>BEHAR: So do you -- can you sleep? You sleep with your eyes open.</s>LEISZ: Correct. Exactly.</s>BEHAR: Is that sleep, though?</s>LEISZ: It`s not really sleep. You kind of just like fade away. I mean, I need medication to sleep at night.</s>BEHAR: Well, who doesn`t?</s>LEISZ: But I mean, it`s like --</s>BEHAR: We all do a little something -- Ambien is popular these days. But this is a whole other level of not being able to sleep. How uncomfortable for you.</s>LEISZ: Yes, it`s very uncomfortable. My whole life has changed. I feel that Dr. Parker has stolen my life from me. I`m no longer the person I once was. I don`t have self-confidence, self-esteem or any self-worth left. When I go to sleep, I just pray that my eyesight will last long enough for me to remember doing things with my grandchildren like making cookies, taking them to the park, reading stories to them. Most importantly, I pray to God that my eyesight will last --</s>BEHAR: Why? Is there a threat of blindness?</s>LEISZ: Yes, there is. I have a threat of constant -- threat of eye infections, glaucoma, corneal ulcers and blindness.</s>BEHAR: Ok. It sounds pretty bad. You went in for just routine eye surgery or what?</s>LEISZ: Actually the surgeon who did this -- I actually went in to see him for a face and neck lift. And he brought -- and I had had a prior</s>BEHAR: And you bought it? You believed it.</s>LEISZ: Yes, I did, because he`s the doctor. He should have told me that - -</s>BEHAR: Did you get a second opinion?</s>LEISZ: No, because I trusted him. I heard he was a very good doctor.</s>BEHAR: I can understand. We like to trust our doctors and he sounds like he was just a bad doctor.</s>LEISZ: He was proven negligent for deviating from the standard of care. I mean, once that -- at that point, it doesn`t matter whether I`ve had one surgery or 100 surgeries, or whether he told me about the risk of the surgery or not. The risk only applies if you do not deviate from the standard of care. I feel the jury was very unfair to me.</s>BEHAR: Why was the jury unfair?</s>LEISZ: I think the only word they heard was I had prior plastic surgery and I should have been aware that this was going to happen to me. And I don`t think --</s>BEHAR: The doctor -- Dr. Parker told us that all patients get pre-surgical counseling. Did you?</s>LEISZ: I don`t believe that was pre-surgical counseling. I was only told I was not going to feel myself. I was going to be bruised and be swollen for a few days after the surgery.</s>BEHAR: So -- ok. So now, the jury did award Marilyn $115,000.</s>ROY KONRAY, ATTORNEY FOR MARILYN LEISZ: Correct.</s>BEHAR: -- which doesn`t sound like a lot of money considering the pain and torture that this woman is in.</s>KONRAY: It fell far short of our expectation, that`s for sure.</s>BEHAR: So what happened? Why not.</s>KONRAY: I think there`s a tremendous prejudice against cosmetic surgery cases. I mean normally I run the other direction. The only reason I even considered this case was --</s>BEHAR: What do you mean you run in the other direction? You don`t want to take the cases?</s>KONRAY: Cosmetic surgery cases, it`s easy for the jury to blame the patient because the patient really didn`t have to have it. It`s not cancer surgery or anything like that. So I usually run the other way. In this case I said to Marilyn, you`re at Will`s Eye Hospital. If your treating doctor will back you up on this and say that this was caused by malpractice, then I will take it. And sure enough her treating doctor at Will`s Eye Hospital who lectures around the world said the problem here is they removed too much skin from the eyelids.</s>BEHAR: You probably didn`t have enough skin to take in the first place so you didn`t really need an eye job.</s>LEISZ: That`s exactly right.</s>BEHAR: He shouldn`t have done it but I guess he just -- they just want to make some money -- in the next segment I`m going to talk to a surgeon about this. Thank you very much for doing this. I wish you best of luck. I don`t know what to say to you. It`s terrible. I`m so sorry.</s>LEISZ: Thank you.