XPost: wny.news, sac.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: misc.survivalism   
   From: psycho@salon.com   
      
   Tammy Cleveland feared the worst when she arrived to DeGraff   
   Memorial Hospital on the night of Oct. 10, 2014.   
      
   Minutes earlier, her husband, Michael, had collapsed in a   
   supermarket in a suburb of Buffalo. Witnesses and paramedics had   
   performed CPR, but Michael had been rushed to the emergency room   
   in serious condition.   
      
   Tammy was sitting in a hospital waiting room with her daughter   
   and stepson when a young doctor named Gregory C. Perry delivered   
   the bad news. He had worked on Michael for an hour but her   
   husband’s heart had refused to restart, Perry allegedly told   
   them.   
      
   Michael was dead, the doctor said.   
      
   But when Tammy and the children were allowed to see the   
   supposedly dead man, what they saw startled them.   
      
   Michael was moving.   
      
   “I immediately noticed that Michael’s eyes turned to me,” Tammy   
   told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “He was alive.”   
      
   When Tammy told Perry, however, she says the doctor didn’t   
   believe her. For more than two and a half hours, she begged the   
   physician, nurses and even a coroner to re-examine her husband —   
   but nobody did, Tammy claims.   
      
   When Perry finally agreed to check Michael’s vital signs, he   
   felt a heartbeat.   
      
   “My God, he’s got a pulse,” the doctor said, according to Tammy.   
      
   The story of how Michael seemingly “came back from the dead” is   
   a strange and ultimately tragic tale of missed opportunities and   
   alleged medical negligence. For the Cleveland family, it has   
   been a nightmare. For countless others, it has conjured up   
   distrust of doctors and captured dark fears of being fatally   
   misdiagnosed by a physician.   
      
   And now it’s the subject of a lawsuit.   
      
   Tammy is suing Perry, another doctor and two hospitals in New   
   York state court over claims that they “negligently, carelessly   
   and recklessly treated” Michael.   
      
   “He didn’t take the time for me at all,” she said of Perry. “He   
   just told me that my husband passed. He couldn’t just come in   
   there and show that he was dead. He couldn’t take a second and   
   put a stethoscope on him and prove to me that he wasn’t   
   breathing.   
      
   I don’t understand that. Why wouldn’t you do that to appease a   
   grieving widow at that time, instead of walking in there   
   nonchalant and give me your two cents acting like I was crazy?”   
      
   Brian Sutter, an attorney representing Perry, declined to   
   comment on the case “due to privacy concerns.” Sutter did add,   
   however, that “Dr. Perry is a caring physician, and as the facts   
   of this case are fully developed, I am confident it will be   
   established that his actions were appropriate.”   
      
   The company that runs the two hospitals declined to comment to   
   local media. A lawyer representing the other doctor in the case   
   said he stood by the physician’s treatment and intended to   
   “vigorously defend the case,” according to the Buffalo News.   
      
   Tammy Cleveland’s nightmare began around 8 p.m. on Oct. 10,   
   2014, when she received a call from Michael’s ex-wife saying he   
   had collapsed at a Tops supermarket in Tonawanda, N.Y.   
      
   Michael, 46, was a tall and handsome telemarketer. He and Tammy   
   had met in 2001 at work in Endicott, N.Y. She was roughly a foot   
   shorter and a few years older, but they had fallen in love and   
   moved to Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo, in 2005.   
      
   When Michael collapsed last year, the couple was just a few days   
   away from moving again to a bigger house near a golf course.   
      
   “We just bought new clubs,” Tammy tearfully told The Post.   
      
   As Perry told Tammy that her husband was dead, she felt her   
   future falling apart.   
      
   But her sorrow started to turn into confusion, then anger, when   
   she and her daughter were allowed to see Michael. Tammy thought   
   it was strange that Michael had supposedly just died, and yet he   
   wasn’t hooked up to oxygen or life support.   
      
   Then she saw Michael move.   
      
   When she told the doctor and a nurse what she had seen, however,   
   they “advised that it looked like [Michael] was breathing and   
   that it was normal because he was expelling what was left in his   
   young body,” according to the lawsuit. “Perry and the nurse   
   assured them that [Michael]’s heart had stopped, that he was not   
   alive but he may expel air and that was normal.”   
      
   When Perry and the nurse left the room, however, Michael “turned   
   his eyes and looked at [Tammy] as she spoke to him,” according   
   to the lawsuit.   
      
   Tammy jumped back in shock. She called Perry and the nurse back   
   in but they “did not touch [Michael] or check his vitals but   
   told the family members this was normal and they again left the   
   room,” according to the lawsuit.   
      
   When Tammy kept speaking to her husband, he “responded by   
   turning his eyes towards [her], moving his head side to side,   
   looking at [her] and moving his legs,” the complaint continues.   
      
   Again, Tammy called in Perry and the nurse. And again, they told   
   her that her husband was dead. For more than two hours, the   
   process repeated itself, with Tammy increasingly convinced that   
   her husband was alive and trying to communicate with her, while   
   his doctors and nurses insisted he was dead, she said.   
      
   “Throughout the night, Michael was doing more and more, and   
   asking for help,” Tammy told The Post. She tried telling Perry   
   and the nurse a third time but was similarly rebuffed, she said.   
      
   “I knew he was alive but a part of me felt like maybe I didn’t   
   know that I was talking about,” Tammy said. “I don’t have a   
   medical degree but I knew he was alive and I wanted somebody to   
   believe me.”   
      
   She reached her breaking point when the coroner arrived to take   
   Michael away for an autopsy.   
      
   “The coroner came in and I just yelled at him: ‘Are you here to   
   prove that my husband is dead? Because he’s not. Look at him,'”   
   Tammy recalled. When Michael’s arm, leg and mouth moved, the   
   coroner “looked at him and walked out” to get the doctor, she   
   said.   
      
   “I said: My god. If the doctor doesn’t prove that Mike’s either   
   dead or alive he’s going to be laying there with him,” Tammy   
   told The Post.   
      
   Finally, at 11:10 p.m., Perry entered the room for a fifth time   
   and agreed to check Michael’s vital signs. More than two hours   
   after he declared Michael dead, Perry now felt a heartbeat.   
      
   “My God, he’s got a pulse,” the doctor said, Tammy recalls.   
      
   “No s—,” she replied.   
      
   Tammy’s account is backed up by her brother and father, who   
   arrived at the hospital roughly two hours after she did.   
      
   “It was very obvious to us when we walked in the room,” her   
   brother, Peter Ferrera, told The Post. “We both walked in the   
   room expecting to console Tammy [because] Mike had passed. We   
   walked in and looked at each other and were stunned because it   
   was obvious to us that he was still breathing. There was   
   condensation in the [breathing] tube. We were just shocked.”   
      
   “We asked Tammy what was going on and she indicated that she had   
   tried several times to get someone to look at him but nobody   
   would,” Ferrera added.   
      
   When Perry finally felt Michael’s pulse, “all hell broke loose.”   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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