UT Southwestern Medical Center — Local services in Dallas

If you are diagnosed with cancer here, GET A SECOND OPINION ELSEWHERE!!!!!!!!! I repeat... GET A SECOND OPINION ELSEWHERE!!!!!!!!!

UTSW has a very high reputation as being a good medical facility, and it still is on most cases. But as I later learned, I am not textbook. However, in recent months my opinion of them has significantly dropped a few thousand notches. I stopped going completely and will never go back. The doctors here need to get off their high horse and go back to the fundamentals of medicine. STAT.

I came here in May 2018 with the diagnosis of having an acoustic neuroma in my left ear. My diagnosis has been BOTCHED severely! At my initial appointments, I was just told it could be this or that, and my doctor never really seemed willing to talk with me. The doctor was only in there for like 10 minutes. Of all things, MY REFLEXES were abnormal and my initial MRI report, done elsewhere, made them decide to check into things further. That's when things went down hill FAST.

I did a spinal MRI there at UTSW, and it was discovered that I had what looked like a Grade 2 or 3 Spinal Astrocytoma, which is extremely rare. My doctors admitted that they have only seen like a small handful of them ever, and one doctor even stated one girl was a lot sicker than me! I had only the ONE MRI DONE and I was told I WAS DYING!!!!!!!!!!

The radiation therapist told me and my family that one of these days I will be lying in bed and won't be able to get up at all. I should be in a wheelchair. (On a side note, they all were thinking that.) He highly suggested that I need to start general radiation soon for 5 minutes daily for 5 weeks straight. The spinal surgeon just sucked. At his appointment, I commented to his fellow that I didn't want to be there. The fellow's response was something like "you don't have to be here. Nothing is stopping you from leaving." I should have! The expert on gliomas sent my images on to colleagues to see if they too thought it was that while we were in the room waiting on him to come in, and to them all, it was. I stated to him "I feel like everyone is making a big deal out of nothing." His response was Why do you say that? I FEEL FINE!!!! There were 3 underlings in the appointment with us as well.

At some point in one of my appointments, WE (being me and my family) WERE TOLD I HAD 2 MONTHS TO 1 YEAR TO LIVE!!!!!!!

The last doctor told me just to come back for another follow up in October... It was only July at this time.

So I end up at MD Anderson Cancer Center down in Houston, TX in August 2018. On my first day there, I saw 3 doctors and all 3 doctors told me I DON"T HAVE CANCER!!!!! And they all looked at the same images that UTSW took.

MD Anderson took blood, did a spinal tap, repeated all of my MRIs, did a CT scan, got special approval from the hospital board to do a CT Myelogram on me, and all of my test results came back normal. They even presented my case in their tumor board, and out of 100+ doctors in that room, NOT ONE OF THEM SAID I HAD A TUMOR.

It is now May 2019, 1 year after the fiasco started, and MDA still believes WHAT I HAVE IS CONGENITAL! I LOVE IT THERE! They actually take time to listen to me and let me be the patient with concerns.

UTSW needs to LISTEN to their patients more AND DO SOME BLOODWORK TO CONFIRM A TERMINAL ILLNESS BEFORE TELLING THE PATIENT AND FAMILY YOU"RE ON LIMITED TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My ear doctor there even called me at the start of this year (2019) himself. In the conversation, he said he presented my case regarding the acoustic neuroma to their skull base conference. It was decided that it could be one, but on a side note they all said, regarding my spine, it could be a SMALL SPINAL ASTROCYTOMA. A small one that they all said was large at first! HAHA!!!! He asked if I wanted to see a neurologist there. My file shows my doctors notes from MDA, and I DO NOT HAVE CANCER!!!!!!!!!!!!! So NO!

The doctors do seem to care. However, I do not trust them. It is sad, really sad that that's how they...

I had the most disappointing experience with UT Southwestern Ophthalmology and Dr. Thorne. This is going to be long, but the lack of care made me feel like this needs to be shared.

I went in for an updated contact / glasses prescription - easy appointment in theory. When I received the prescription and went to fill it, I was told by 1-800 CONTACTS that the numbers written down weren’t even numbers that existed in the contact world. Also, everything should have been positive in my prescription was accidentally written down as a negative.

I called numerous times to try and get this fixed. I left a ton of messages and it took so much effort to get someone on the phone to fix this issue. They sent in, what they claimed to be, the prescription they meant to write down to 1-800 CONTACTS. I received the new box of contacts and I couldn’t see anything out of them.

I called (numerous times) again to update them that the prescription was still wrong in some way. They claimed, after looking at the prescription again, they could see what was wrong and could send in ANOTHER prescription to 1800 CONTACTS to try. I declined and said I wanted a sample pair from them and didn’t want to pay for another box of contacts that would be the wrong prescription. They agreed to this and said they would follow up.

They never did – I never received a sample contact or even a phone call. I went home to CO for winter break and saw the Dr. I used to go to when I was living there. He did a whole new evaluation on me and found that the prescription given to me had a power of 2.5 too high. He said it was incredibly wrong and doesn’t understand how anyone would give me a prescription that high. To me, 2.5 off in the world of contacts was not within the margin of error and completely unacceptable.

I called the office to request a refund for my services that they provided. I paid $225 for my visit and lost all of the money I spent at 1800 CONTACTS on incorrect lenses. After talking to them they said they totally agreed that this was unacceptable service, but that they would have to look into refunding me the money. They said they could potentially refund me the $37 for the cost of the prescription, but that the rest was considered exam fees. I explained that the office required the exam to get the prescription (I couldn’t have cared less about the eye imaging and all that) so, I felt that I was owed that money as well because I paid all of it solely to get a contact prescription.

Bri Otto, the UT Southwestern office manager, said she would be contacting me concerning my refund and following up. This was almost 2 weeks ago. I have called back and left messages, but no contact has been made with me.

I fully expect them to keep my money and move on since no one seems interested in fixing the issues they caused. I cannot warn people enough to NOT GO HERE. They are totally disorganized and not a reliable doctor’s office. You will lose money using these people. Even though the name sounds prestigious, this office is not run in a professional manner. Go...

I had the most horrible experience with my ER visit at UT Southwester University. When I first arrived i was in severe pain, and told them, then I told them I only wanted a female dr. and they said ok well, i saw a woman but found out later the only doctor in the er was a man, so I assume she was a nurse, and said the man that came in to help her was her assist. as they continued they said I needed a blood transfussion, that normal (After we left looked it up and our bodies hold 7 not 12) 12 pints in our body and I only had 6, so they admitted me and put me in in a room and gave me 1pint of blood, and nothing for pain and nothing but water without ice that I found out that they also wanted to do a colon scope and get the bioposy of what they called a mass and i wasn't supposed to have any food or even jello if it was red , and then my sister arrived. She brought me ice water, and jello( which was red) which the nurse she asked if I could have it said of course so i ate the jello within 5 minutes the doctor who reminded me of doogie howser because he was way younger than my youngest son, came into the room and said that when the ER did the Cat Scan they found a Mass, and he thought I should've had the colon scope test but since I had just finished 2 cherry jello's he didn't think that was going to work now so I should at least talk to the Gastro doctor,, and my sister started questioning why I only got 1 pint of blood when I was at a 6 and they said normal was 12 and the nurse mumbled well 1 could do some good as opposed to none, and left the room as she said that. Then I thought I will just talk to the Gastro doctor, and when he got in my room, he spoke maybe 2 sentences, before a korean that I had seen in the ER room the night before came in and took over saying that they worked as a team, although that doctor that first came in never said another word, the korean man in scrubs was about 27 or 28 and was aggressive in my opinion, and he said we just want to look at the mass which was on my rectum, and I believed to be just a hemmoroid, so I hesitantly let them see and the korean doctor went ahead and spead it apart and caused it to start bleeding again. I screamed at him and he stepped back, Then after i quit crying he told me that in his medical opinion the mass was cancerous, and more than likely i would end up having to have a colostomy bag! I said all that with a cat scan and a blood transfussion of 1 pint, are you serious, and I asked for my discharge papers, and my iv to be taken out, and that was the most humiliating and devastating and painful and horrible hospital i have ever been too, Do Not go to this hospital is my review no matter what. They are misdiagnosing, and they lied to me on several occasions and through it all they never gave me anything for pain until right before I left they gave me a tylenol 3. PLEASE BE AWARE.I WOULD NOT GIVE THEM ANY STARS IF I COULD'VE LEFT A...