This story is about a soulful, kind, brave family doctor in Texas, Dr. John Day.
Dr. Day has spent most of his career working in areas of medicine that are patient-focused and light on industry glamor, including in-patient psychiatry at a public hospital in Texas.
When COVID showed up. Dr. Day quickly researched available information on effective treatments and started properly treating his patients. The treatments he used worked for his patients. They felt better. He didn’t lose any.
Surreally, he was the only doctor at his clinic actually treating them the way one would expect from a doctor, as opposed to just “following orders.”
But then, in a Stalinesque manner, he was forbidden by the clinic administration to use available effective treatments, even though they saw that his method was working, and the patients were happy.
Dr. Day then came up with mostly over-the-counter combinations that mimicked the medicines he could no longer prescribe to the patients for political (fascist?) reasons.
When the mandates were announced, Dr. Day declined the injection and was scheduled to be fired—but then the plot got even thicker.
In August 2021, Governor Abbot issued an executive order undermining vaccines mandates in Texas. Then, Dr. Day was fired for “cause,” namely, for helping a disabled patient, on his free time, get her stolen ID renewed at the DMV—and also for “offending” people by expressing his strong views on the mandates.
Dr. Day was fired by the administration on his “off” day as he, in his gardening clothes, was planting vegetables in the clinic garden. His small victory was that the plan to fire him in secret, on the day when he wasn’t supposed to be there, didn’t work out. He walked into the office in his gardening clothes, and all his colleagues saw what happened. (But did they object? No, they were seemingly too scared.)
Today, Dr. Day is dedicating his time to blogging about everything in the world and remodeling his house, with soul.
We all can only hope that if we ever need medical assistance, we can get a doctor like Dr. Day—as opposed to a robot in a white coat who “just follows orders.”
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Fired for Helping Patients: A Conversation with Dr. John Day