We’ve got a brand new book out this week: Uncle John’s Germophobia. It’s all about hospital horrors, bad doctors, botched surgeries, nightmare nurses, weird diseases, and all the things that can and will go wrong when it comes to your health. Here’s a taste of the kind of thing you’ll find inside.

In 2011, a Utah woman named Jennifer Swalberg went in for two fairly routine plastic surgery procedures at the clinic of Dr. Joseph Berg: liposuction and an abdominalplasty (also known as a “tummy tuck”). Most of the details of what allegedly happened next were reported in a lawsuit filing, so, to say the least, things didn’t go well.

Swalberg says Berg wrapped her healing dressings so tightly that it indented the skin and irritated the incisions on her stomach. Swalberg returned to Berg’s clinic, who treated the wounds by soaking some gauze in antiseptic, then shoving it into the wounds…with his fingers. Then he pulled it out, and re-stitched the wounds. Those didn’t heal properly either, and Swalberg developed swelling, and hardened chunks of scar tissue all over her abdomen. Swalberg returned to Berg for more treatment, but he passed out in the hallway outside her exam room. (Really.) On the next appointment, Berg administered local anesthetic to Swalberg’s tender abdomen, disappeared for an hour, then returned to treat the scar tissue after the anesthetic had worn off. Swalberg says he stabbed at her wounds with a pickle fork – an actual pickle fork – in order to loosen the scar tissue. Those wounds soon became infected, and leaked blood and pus. Swalberg didn’t have any more follow-ups at the clinic, because she claims they stopped answering the phone when she would call.

This all happened around the same time that a state occupational licensing board began investigating Berg when his staff reported seeing him consume handfuls of painkillers and fall asleep standing up. Plenty of prescription drugs were also found at Berg’s home by police responding to a 911 call in November 2011…where they also found Berg’s girlfriend tied up and locked in a closet.

Berg served six months in jail for the attack; Swalberg’s lawsuit is still pending.

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