 I actually can't believe that what I'm about to say is actually real. A Wisconsin nurse amputated a man's foot without their permission. Welcome back to the channel, everybody, for those of you who are new around here. My name is Michael, aka Dr. Chalini, and I am a board certified diagnostic and interventional radiologist. Man, oh man, these stories just keep getting weirder and weirder. It's like every week, I think to myself, there can't be another crazy healthcare story this week that I have to cover. And sure enough, there always is. Actually, this past week, there were two crazy stories. One involves a nurse and the other, a doctor. And for those of you who comment below on all my videos, oh, Dr. Chalini, you never talked about doctors. You only talked about nurses and other healthcare workers. That's not entirely true because I recently did an entire video on that crazy anesthesiologist story that I posted a few videos back, link up here. And also I was about to do another video on yet another anesthesiologist in the news currently, but it wasn't really a PG story to do a video on. And I don't think YouTube would even allow me to post it. I don't think they would like it. But if you have no clue what I'm talking about, go ahead and Google Tufts Anesthesiologist, and that'll pretty much tell you everything you need to know about it. I will say with a quick disclaimer here that what the anesthesiologist was doing was absolutely disgusting, allegedly. Now, back to the story. So apparently this past week, a nurse from Wisconsin is being charged with elderly abuse after she amputated a man's foot without his permission. You know, it's not funny, but like, how is this even real? How is that headline even real? How is the story even real? I don't even know. Let's just continue. That headline isn't insane enough. She allegedly told her colleagues that she was going to display the amputated foot in her family's taxidermy story. And as usual, there is a lot to unpack here. So let's get into the whole story right now. Apparently, Mary Kay Brown, the nurse in this case, who is 38 years old, was taken care of a 62-year-old male who suffered a fall at home and whose foot was subsequently damaged from frostbite. It is unclear how long it was before the man was found at his home, but we do know that the heat was not turned on during this time, causing the tissue in his feet to become necrotic and die from frostbite. On May 27th, the nurse amputated the foot and allegedly told her fellow nurses that she was going to display the amputated foot with a sign that says, where are your boots, kids? I really wish I was making this stuff up. The man died eight days later after the operation on June 4th, and this past week, the nurse that amputated the foot was criminally charged. This whole thing began back in March when the patient was admitted to the Spring Valley Health and Rehab Center in a rural town of Spring Valley, Wisconsin, which apparently is close to the border of Minnesota, and you always know I like to look these places up, so let's do that right now. So we did a nice visual of where this place is, what it looks like, all that kind of stuff. It really helps tie in the story. So here we have a picture of the sign, and that is some solid signage right there, exactly what I would expect from this place. Now let's take a look at the map, so we have a little geography to orient us with this story. All right, so you see it's on the Wisconsin-Minnesota border, not too far away from Minneapolis. I think they said 30 minutes. And you know, let's take a look at some of the reviews, just I mean, they have three stars, which isn't bad. And of course, this is one of the first reviews that is probably bringing down the star rating. Y'all let a nurse cut off someone's foot even after the director said not to do it. What is wrong with you? Six lights. Actually, I take that back. This isn't the only one star rating that's holding this organization back because there are plenty not-so-good star ratings. Okay, back to the story. So the patient was admitted to the rehab facility back in March. He had fallen and was struggling to recover from his damaged foot from frostbite. The patient's health continued to decline during this time and even fell out of bed, further damaging his frostbitten foot. Two months later, in May, Nurse Brown said that she thought the foot needed amputation. At this time, the doctors involved in the case believed that the patient was near the end of his life, and other nursing staff said that the patient's foot was necrotic and only held on to the rest of his leg by a few pieces of damaged skin and tendons. Brown decided to take measures into her own hands and ended up amputating the patient's foot because she was trying to make the quality of life better for him. She said that the patient constantly complained about the smell and she thought she would make it better. Again, a lot to unpack here. Why did the nurse decide to take matters into her own hands and amputate the foot? Has she ever amputated the foot before? Unlikely as she's not a trained surgeon. Does she even know how to amputate a foot? Again, unlikely. Amputating a limb is more than just cutting off the foot. You have to amputate at a certain level so that you can sew together normal, healthy skin. You have to lidiate arteries and veins. You have to ensure that the amputated portion of the foot or leg is going to heal. This is a major surgery whether or not the foot is dead or not. Again, I don't have pictures of the foot or know exactly what was going on or the degree of necrosis or whatnot, but you should always amputate higher than the dead tissue so that you can allow the amputated or the distal portion of the leg or foot to heal normally. You can't just stay at a holiday end and then wake up the next day and know how to amputate a foot. It's just not how it works. But the nurse did say that there was no blood during the procedure and another nurse said that the patient felt no pain. So, all in a day's work, right? Well, it's kind of obvious that the patient wouldn't feel too much pain as the foot was necrotic. However, there were some conflicting stories during this investigation. One anonymous nurse told investigators that the patient was gripping so tightly during the procedure and even moaning a little bit from pain. Two days later, the patient told another nurse who will remain unnamed that the patient felt everything and it hurt really bad according to the affidavit. Also, where did the nurse even perform this amputation? Was it bedside? Was the foot literally just hanging on by one tendon and she just went in there and snipped it? Did she have a scalpel? A bone saw? I doubt she had access to a bone saw, right? At a rehab facility? What did she do with the remaining portion of the amputated leg? Did she just leave it? I have literally so many questions about this case and I wish I had more access to the information in this case so that I could know more about it. So what exactly did she do with the foot that she amputated, that she so dearly wanted to hold on to? Well, she put it in a biohazard bag and put it in the freezer, of course. How else would she keep her prize possession safe? One of Brown's colleagues said that she mentioned taking Brown's foot home and epoxying it, which the nurse said that she found to be strange. Yeah, that's about as strange as it gets. It's given me a little Jeffrey Dahmer vibes. The patient later died on June 4th and the Mord worker noticed that the patient's amputated foot was not there in notified authorities. The CEO of the facility stated that Brown did not follow standard procedure and write a report on the incident. I mean, this is like hilarious at this point. Like what? That was his response to his nurse amputating a leg. They didn't write a report on the incident. Like that's the response? This is so odd to me. There was no note about the amputation in the patient's chart and there was no order from the doctor to do so. I guess maybe she forgot to write her op note and that's where we draw the line of this facility. The CEO went on to say that the best practice would have been to get the order from the doctor which he believes they would have given. Again, I'm still kind of really confused here. Is this common practice for the nurse to amputate a foot at this facility? Like it's not a surgical facility, it's a rehab facility. Like the CEO doesn't seem to be too taken aback that one of their former employees amputated one of their patient's feet. Am I missing something here? He just says they didn't follow protocol. I hope protocol is not amputating a foot but I don't even know what to say at this point. They're like, yeah, I mean, it probably would have been fine if he just amputated the foot as a nurse if you just had an order and maybe put a note in about it. Like what? But she didn't put a note in so that's part of the problem here. How about the fact that your former nurse just amputated some guy's foot? The CEO also stated that he did not believe that Brown had malicious motive but she has also been fired since the incident. I feel like if I were the CEO in this situation I'd be like, yeah, of course we fired her. She amputated one of our patient's feet without permission. Like of course we fired her. That's insane. But instead they're like, hmm, she broke protocol. So weird. So Brown is due in court this coming December and she may face up to 40 years in prison on each of the felony charges and also pay a $100,000 fine for each charge as well. I guess we'll wait until December to see what officially happens. I swear some of the things I've read out of the healthcare world has been like straight out of a movie. This is insane. I'm not really sure what this nurse was actually thinking between the decision to amputate, actually amputating and then keeping the amputated foot. I'm really confused by this whole thing. Also, who wants to keep a necrotic foot? That's like the last thing I wanna keep. Okay, I think we're done with this story here. As always, let me know in the comments what you think about all this. Do you think this is as insane as I think it is? I'm curious to know what you all think about it. As always, follow me on Instagram and TikTok if you don't already. And of course, I'll see you all on the next video. Bye.