Dr. Gilbert Neil Witte, MD

My 83 year old father was a recent patient at Olean General Hospital with what we were initially told was pneumonia with pleural effusion. Three days later, Dr. Witte came into his hospital room at 3:30 a.m. while doing rounds, woke him up, told him he had lung cancer, and left. My father laid there the rest of the day until his family members came to visit him that evening at which time he started crying and told us what Dr. Witte told him about having cancer. Very very disappointed in the way this horrible information was relayed to my father.

I have always wanted to write this but have waited years to do it. When my mother was told that the cancer from her kidney that had been removed had spread to her lungs we were devastated. We met with Dr. Witte and he told her/us in a very detached and cold manner that there " was really nothing that they could do to help her. We left the office crying, but I was determined not to accept his opinion at face value. Thankfully we found Dr. Al Attab at the Oncology Dept. at BRMC, he informed us that there was a drug called Sutent that was showing very good results with this type of cancer. My mother went on the drug, the tumors shrunk drastically and she enjoyed very good quality of life for many years after that. How could Dr. Witte have been so CLUELESS?