Dr. Yvonne Y Lai, MD

When you are inpatient you sign giving the hospital the right to treat you. Ok. Sure. But you also have the right to request AND SEE an MD. Sentara had taken excellent care of me until a few months ago. At this admission I never saw Dr. Lai, even tho I was admitted on her watch. I have a non-alcoholic liver disease and requested pain relief and asked for the hospitalist. "You can't see her," I was told. The nurse called her and told me, "She says you can have Demerol or nothing." I asked this guy if she understood what I was there for? Because Demerol is contradicted in liver disease! I told the nurse that he needed to tell her I'd been given Demerol in the 1980s and had to be resuscitated! "Demerol or nothing," he repeated. Since I was in forced withdrawal during a life-threatening attack of my disorder I was not actually able to give LEGAL CONSENT. It is all over my record there but I caved and I went into respiratory distress. The vomiting worsened and finally I left AMA and a… friend took me to Fairfax because I had lost about 60% of vision in one eye (now I'm half-blind-permanently. There's no point in protesting or suing, but the reality is that under the Obamacare rules, MDs are bulletproof. Don't go to Sentara expecting anything remotely like adequate care. Trying to get help there is utterly pointless and could be fatal.