Dr. Kristen Benne Wendell

Cancer is not the time to gamble on the limits of your provider’s expertise. Our experience with Kristen Wendell left us seriously questioning whether she was equipped to handle anything beyond a straightforward case. If you are over the age of 40 and/or have even one comorbidity like high blood pressure or any kind of allergies, you are playing with your life trying to get treatment under Kristen Wendell. She will do things like - make blatant mistakes like printing off the incorrect medication label and will waste the entire appointment meant to talk about a test result to insist that she didn’t do it even with hard evidence on the bottle and her name next to the print off order - dodge questions - read test results off the computer as if seeing it for the first time It's very clear she doesn't know how to handle complexities that occur with preexisting co-morbidities and the side effects of chemo. You will never get a straight answer out of her and while I recognize a lot of… medical professionals can't give hard numbers or answers, the least I would expect is the reasoning behind their uncertainty. Wendell just doesn't know. And this will make it a terrifying harrowing experience to try and navigate through battling advanced cancer with her kind of dubious care and attitude. If you value your life or your loved one’s life, you will make the effort to seek out higher qualified professionals that is actually a Doctor of Medicine. Northwestern for example is full of nothing but Ivy League M.D’s who also hold additional MPH and/or PhD degrees specializing in specific cancers. Wendell is not an M.D., has no additional graduate degrees listed, and her profile highlights spending time with her kids rather than research or further specialization. Compare this to the professionals at Northwestern who keep current with the latest research and advancements in cancer treatments, who participate is publishing research papers on different treatments actively along with their work in being an oncologist and surgeon. There shouldn’t be this big of a range in a field where it’s a literal matter of life or death. Wendell misses basic things like CA-125 monitoring—something Northwestern’s team brought to our attention to track. Please believe me when I say, do not waste your precious time or life with Kristen Wendell, which you will be tempted to do just because she will be the fastest available appointment. But take a minute to think about why that is, and do make the effort to find someone more qualified even if you have to wait a week or 2. Right after your diagnosis you're going to feel urgency but 1-2 weeks in the big picture doesn't matter if it means you get good quality care. And trying to do treatment with Wendell set us back so much it would've been well worth the 1-2 week wait for Northwestern. I have seriously never regretted a decision more in my entire life than trying to do cancer treatment under Kristen Wendell