‘Devastated’ Kidney Patient Takes Witness Stand

When Harry Jordan’s healthy left kidney was removed by surgeons hired to take out his cancerous right one, his life became an unending regimen of pain, pills and medical visits, he testified Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Jordan said that a string of medical blunders by Long Beach Community Hospital, six doctors and two medical groups reduced him from an active fisherman, golfer and insurance broker to a nearly wheelchair-bound invalid forced to take between 18 and 28 pills a day to keep himself alive.

“I am devastated,” Jordan said during his multimillion-dollar malpractice trial. “To be so active, and then be cut off at the best time, is devastating. I can’t seem to manage things at all.”

On Nov. 26, 1982, Jordan was rushed to Long Beach Community Hospital, where surgeons removed the wrong kidney and left a tumor the size of “a large softball or a small basketball” in his body, his attorney, David M. Harney, said.

In the two years since the operation, Jordan had more than 80% of his remaining kidney removed at UCLA Medical Center.

His lawsuit contends that the doctors, medical groups and hospital were negligent, reckless and wanton in their treatment and asks that Jordan be awarded punitive damages and be compensated for hospital and legal fees and loss of earnings.

As Jordan, a 64-year-old Huntington Beach resident, recounted the drastic changes the surgical error caused in his life, one trembling hand gripped the witness stand and the other clutched one of two metal canes with which he propels himself for short distances.

Above the pale and shaking man was pinned a picture taken two months before the surgery: A robust and smiling Harry Jordan posed on a Santa Catalina Island deck beside the 181-pound marlin he had just caught.

“We (Jordan and his wife, Miriam) used to attend a lot of cocktail parties and dances, go to a lot of seminars, travel a little--small trips to Catalina and Palm Springs. Since the surgery, I have been unable to do any of it, though I’ve tried,” Jordan said, his voice dropping. “It’s been an entirely different life, completely different.”

Today, Jordan said, he must have an attendant whenever he leaves his home--to testify in court or make his weekly visits to his doctor. He has had to hire help to take out his trash, care for his lawn and tend his boat, he said.

“Now, I stay in my room and read or watch TV,” Jordan said when his testimony began on Dec. 27. “I’m in all day unless I can talk someone into taking me to the store with them, and even then I just wait in the car.”

Jordan testified that his 6-year-old Long Beach insurance agency made him between $100,000 and $150,000 annually and that, because he was forced to sell the company after his surgery, he had been deprived of that income. His attorneys are asking an estimated $2 million for the loss of the business alone.

Personal income tax records produced as evidence during cross-examination Wednesday, however, state that the combined income of Jordan and his wife was $48,300 in 1981 and $44,200 in 1982.

Besides Long Beach Community Hospital, Jordan is suing Drs. Carlton H. Waters, Marshall J. Grobert, Barton H. Wachs, William W. Stanton, Robert H. Odell, Rudolph E. Chaney, Community Radiology Medical Group Inc. and the medical corporation of Marshall J. Grobert, M.D., and Donald E. Sawyer, M.D.

Because of media attention generated by the trial, four Southern California residents offered during the holidays to donate a kidney to Jordan for a transplant operation. Urologist Robert Smith, who performed surgery on Jordan’s remaining cancerous kidney, said, however, that his patient is not a candidate for a kidney transplant.

“The bottom line is that Harry Jordan does not need a kidney transplant,” Smith said. “And if he did, he would not be a candidate because of his general poor health.”

Smith explained that since Jordan retains some minimal kidney function, it would be unwise to operate. He said there is no way to tell how long Jordan’s remaining kidney will continue to function. If it fails, dialysis would be a safer procedure than a kidney transplant, because Jordan also has a cardiac problem, the urologist said.