Arrested Taylor doctor's ex-patient: 'How many lives did he ruin?'

TAYLOR, Mich. (FOX 2) – A 78-year-old doctor with a clinic in Taylor is charged alleged excessive prescription of painkillers, and medication, and commit insurance fraud.

“How many times has he ruined someone’s life with that?” Elizabeth Dew said.

This week, thousands of patients like Dew, a former neurology patient, learned that their former doctor had been arrested.

FOX 2 asked, “What was your reaction?”

“I just started crying,” she replied.

The doctor is now also under surveillance for possible sexual misconduct with his patients, which may have occurred in a bizarre bedroom in his clinic.

Dew was referred to a doctor in 2018 after experiencing a fainting seizure. She says he diagnosed her with seizures after a test and prescribed her medication.

She immediately began to suffer severe side effects from the medication.

“I felt like I was trapped in my body and couldn’t get out,” Dew said.

The medication resulted in frequent doctor visits every few weeks for six months.

“I would go and say, ‘I can’t be honest; I react badly to it,'” she said. “And so he prescribed something else for me. It was like he was prescribing me something different every two weeks.”

As a result, Dew was unable to drive or work.

“I lost almost everything,” she said. “I had to sell my car and almost lost my apartment. I was completely broke.”

Related: Secret bedroom found in raided Taylor doctor's office as 'pill mill' allegations mount

The medication left Dew almost immobile.

“My grandchildren were like, 'What's wrong with Nana?' and that broke my heart,” she said.

Her family urged her to seek a second opinion, which she received from the Mayo Clinic. Doctors there determined that she had no seizures and had never had one.

“It was all the medications that caused it,” she said.

Although she was not prescribed painkillers, she witnessed them being distributed and sold, which is consistent with Taylor police's account.

“People would come there and get their painkillers and sell them right there,” she said. “They didn’t even leave the parking lot.”