You’ve heard of doctors passing down the family legacy, but this Austrian neurosurgeon tried to pass her drill to her 12-year-old daughter.
Somewhere, Hippocrates is screaming.
This story centers around Dr. Theresa L., a neurosurgeon at the University Hospital Graz, who allegedly allowed her 12-year-old daughter to drill a hole in a patient’s skull during surgery. The operation was meant to save a 33-year-old farm worker who’d been struck on the head by a falling tree branch.
As the surgery was wrapping up, prosecutors say Dr. Theresa let her daughter, who’d begged to watch the procedure, take control of the skull drill to create a small opening for a pressure probe. Witnesses claim the girl performed the action herself and that the doctor later bragged to nurses about her “daughter’s first drill hole.”
But the act didn’t go unnoticed.
Fortunately, Dr. Stefan Wolfsberger, head of neurosurgery, condemned the incident in court, saying,
“This is terrible. The case is known all over the world… Respect for our patients is our damned duty.”
It was reportedly another senior anesthetist in the room who filed the internal complaint, sparking the investigation.
The patient, incredibly, survived the operation and recovered well, though he was too ill to testify during the latest court hearing. Both Dr. Theresa and a junior neurosurgeon, who admitted he didn’t refuse when the girl asked to help, have been fired and charged with bodily harm.
And Dr. Theresa maintains her innocence, calling it “stupid motherly pride,” while prosecutors argue it was reckless arrogance. The trial will resume on December 10.
If she really did hand over that drill to her daughter, she deserves to lose her medical license and spend time in jail. Her daughter isn’t a trained surgeon, she only got that chance because her mother was in charge.
What makes this even worse is that it happened to a poor farmer with no money, no influence, and no voice. Let’s be honest, they’d never dare pull something like this on a powerful or well-connected patient.
Doctors are supposed to be the one profession we trust completely. We hand them our lives without question. But when someone like this abuses that trust, it destroys the faith we have in the entire system.
There was a time when people respected doctors, police officers, and politicians. Now, because of people like her, those professions are among the most distrusted in society.
Dr. Theresa knew exactly what she was doing, the risks, and the consequences, and she still went through with it because she thought she could get away with it.
THE WHY: IMPUNITY
5/5 stars because doctors are among the few people we entrust with our lives, and handing your 12-year-old a drill during surgery is beyond words.
“Look, most of us want a normal life without any drama, but life in this world is always strange, and uncertain.
I don’t need your email. I don’t want to bug you with a billion notifications. All I ask is this, if you felt something here, if this made you think, laugh, or even shake your head in disbelief, just bookmark ‘Averagebeing.com’ and come back tomorrow.
That’s it. No strings. Just you, me, and this stupid world.”
