Safwat Kamel: When A Doctor Named Wang Cuts Off Your Ball And You Can't Sue

Not a good experience, in the OR or the courtroom

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You go to a doctor because you have an enlarged testicle. Clearly you're not having a run of good luck to begin with.

The doctor you get at LBJ Hospital is Dr. Run Wang. Maybe you feel encouraged by this, maybe you don't. He and another doctor diagnose excess fluid around your ball and put you under the knife to take out the fluid.

While they're all up in your business, Wang decides he doesn't like the looks of your testicle. It's not so much a matter of aesthetics as it is he thinks it appears "very abnormal" and therefore believes your colon cancer had spread. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am, he eliminates the alleged problem by eliminating your ball.

Except your ball turns out to be just fine, at least in terms of not having cancer. (How it looks, we can't judge.) So you sue. And your run of bad luck continues.

You can't sue Wang or the other doctor because they're working for a state hospital and the court rules they were acting in the normal course of business there.

So you sue the hospital, or more specifically the entity that runs it, the UT Health Science at Houston.

They squawk, saying they have immunity from such suits. You argue on about how you didn't give consent to have your ball removed, and that you'd think someone might have informed you of the possibility.

But you get nowhere. The 1st Court of Appeals finds that the UT Health Science Center can't be sued over the incident.

You resolve, we can only assume, never to trust anyone named Wang with your remaining testicle.