Golden Rule: In memory of Robert ‘Bob’ Mason
http://helenair.com/news/opinion/golden-rule/article_b5ad0c5d-ef3e-59d4-9921-9b8eb3bd31e5.html
Last week, like many other recently, saw a couple of twists and turns in the “ongoing saga” of “embattled” Helena physician Mark Ibsen.
On Tuesday, the state board of medical examiners indefinitely suspended his medical license on the grounds of failure to meet standards of care in his record-keeping.
Two days later, District Judge James Reynolds suspended the board’s suspension by issuing a temporary restraining order and injunction against it, thereby granting Ibsen at least 30 more days to practice the healing art.
Ibsen’s “ongoing saga” with BOME began in July 2013, when an investigation into allegations of over-prescription of painkillers began. Despite the fact that a hearing officer for the Montana Department of Labor and Industry later deemed Ibsen’s pain-pill prescriptions were for legitimate medical reasons and said that he employed and encouraged alternatives to medication for chronic pain, the case wears on.
But today is not the time further focus on Ibsen’s dedication to pain patients or BOME’s dedication to keeping him from the Hippocratic oath. Today is dedicated to Robert “Bob” Mason, a chronic pain patient caught in the crossfire. No ink has yet to be spilled over him.
About 20 members of the public showed up at or phoned into Tuesday’s hearing — many of them (former) patients and colleagues. Several of them said they were participating not only in support of Ibsen, but also in memory of Mason.
Here’s what I’ve been able to find out about him, mostly from Ibsen anecdotally but not from Ibsen’s records, to which the doctor no longer has access.
Robert “Bob” Mason was born 65-some years ago, maybe in New York state. He died in Helena on Jan. 16, 2016, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.
Bob went to college, had at least two sons and a daughter and worked with children, possibly at Head Start. He could have been any of us.
Then, something happened to his back somewhere along the line, requiring surgery. The procedure was botched, leaving Bob in abject pain and misery with something common enough to have a name, “failed back surgery syndrome.” Failed back surgery syndrome hijacked Bob’s life and left him on the margins of society.
Pain medication afforded him some relief, but the current political climate and fear often denied him access to it. Doctors dropped him or were not allowed to prescribe what he needed at the level he needed it.
He had suicidal thoughts, but only when he was in withdrawal, which is where he found himself this winter a couple weeks after losing access to a prescribing doctor on Dec. 31.
When he showed up to support Ibsen at his seven-hour hearing on Jan. 14, “he was completely out of medication and it showed.”
Two days later, he was gone, until now without a trace.
Peace, Bob Mason, peace.
Leah Gilman plans to honor Bob Mason’s memory at the voting booth this fall.
Filed under: General Problems
Tying into some of Barb’s comments….Mr. Mason was at the hearing. The BOM of Montana is most likely made up primarily of licensed physicians who should have recognized that this chronic pain patient was in suffering in abject pain. I submit that the Montana BOM was too blinded by political ambition to see the suffering human in their midst. I submit to you that the Montana BOM was too stiff-necked in their hubris to look Dr. Ibsen in the eye and admit to him that they were in the wrong for persecuting him and that they needed to drop this whole charade and apologize to him and his patients, human beings all, like Bob Mason.
this is really sad. his chronic pain patient was at his hearing and they couldnt see the pain this man was in? What this doctor did for him which from what i read was not wrong at all. whats wrong with people? Why do people from the cdc or whereever do they care? the doctors wasnt thereat least one doctor who could have saved this man? why did they go after that doctor for poor handwriting? What is wrong with thev world today, does any doctor out there care? Whynis everything so polictical? Back in the day, you could go to the doctor with no fear of getting your meds. It doesnt make any sense to me. Whats next?Will they start on your relgion next? i wonder. This world right now is in sad sad shape. Why? Cause certain people in this world make it that way.
Barb
You ask why.
Follow the money.
PROP
ASIPP