From Champion to Crippled: A Patient’s Indictment of Systemic Medical Neglect

Denied, Dismissed, Disabled: How Bureaucracy and Mid-Level Gatekeeping Are Abandoning Ohio Patients in Crisis | Part I in the series “The Pain Traveler”

I write this not as a malcontent, but as a former two-time national powerlifting champion who, well into my 50s, maintained an elite level of physical conditioning. I am a certified personal trainer, nutritionist, and fitness and strength coach. Until recently, I lived with extraordinary discipline—training 90 minutes a session, three times a week, and walking two to three miles daily. I hiked. I golfed. I played competitive volleyball. I practiced taekwondo. I regularly attended the local range to practice marksmanship. I volunteered at an assisted living facility, where I helped residents care for and walk their dogs. And I was months away from stepping onto a Masters over-50 bodybuilding stage.

Today, none of that is possible.

Today, my life is one of suffocating immobility—bound in a full thoracic brace, relying on my wife to tie my shoes, lying on a bed just to shave or dress, and unable to complete even simple tasks like carrying in groceries or taking out the garbage.

Now I am a patient in extremis—suffering from profound loss of function so severe that I am often unable to bend, reach, or even dress myself without triggering incapacitating, violent thoracic spasms that would send most people to the emergency room. My body, once my strength, has become my prison. And the reason is not simply my injury—it is the willful, systemic refusal of the medical system to acknowledge, diagnose, or treat it.

Despite a formal referral from my physician for interventional spine care, I was blocked from seeing the very doctor I was sent to: Dr. Joseph Williams. A physician assistant—Priscilla Briguglio, PA-C—at the Southwoods Sports Spine Pain Clinic, not a physician, interposed herself as a gatekeeper, denied me access, and rerouted me back to conservative treatments that had already failed. I returned a second time to the same clinic, again asking to see the doctor named in my referral. Again, I was denied.

What is worse, the building I was twice sent to also houses Dr. Sean McGrath, a board-certified physical medicine and rehabilitation physician whose clinical specialty includes the very treatments I need—such as fluoroscopy-guided injections, medial branch blocks, and radiofrequency ablation. His name was never mentioned. No disclosure. No informed consent. No referral.

That is not medicine. That is deception by omission. It is a breach of duty, a violation of informed consent, and a failure so egregious it borders on criminal. When a patient presents with clearly defined, functionally disabling spinal pathology—and is met with silence, diversion, and denial—the injury is not merely physical. It is moral.

For nearly two years, I have been endlessly recycled through high-volume, low-effort physical therapy clinics offering one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter protocols that have yielded zero therapeutic benefit while deferring or outright denying access to legitimate, individualized interventional care.

And let us not pretend this is an isolated incident. The culture of bureaucratic obstruction in medicine—particularly in pain and spine care—is not accidental. It is engineered. Under the guise of “policy” and “multimodal management,” patients are recycled endlessly through ineffective therapies while interventions that might restore function are kept behind locked doors. Gatekeeping by mid-level providers is now so routine it escapes scrutiny. And there is no meaningful oversight.

I am not asking for opioids. I am not asking for another round of medication management. I am demanding resolution. This is not an unsolvable problem. Mechanical thoracic pain, costovertebral dysfunction, and segmental instability are well-documented clinical entities—highly responsive to targeted interventional procedures in capable hands. With proper imaging, precise diagnostics, and guided treatments, function can be restored. But only if access is granted.

This model was not created by physicians. It was created by legislation, policy, and profit. It is the byproduct of a system that prioritizes throughput over healing and compliance over clinical courage. The Affordable Care Act, for all its promises of equity and access, has operationalized the rationing of care while distributing the illusion of coverage. The result? Substandard care for all, excellence for none, and a bureaucracy that no longer recognizes moral injury when it sees it.

To that end, I have prepared and submitted a 58-page master case file and formal complaint to the State Medical Board of Ohio, CMS, the Ohio Department of Health, the Office for Civil Rights (HHS), and the Medicare Beneficiary Ombudsman. I will not allow this to be buried in paperwork or whitewashed by legalese. I will not go quietly into debility because a system has decided I am more profitable injured than well.

This is not just about pain. This is about the destruction of autonomy, the medical abandonment of the capable, and the dehumanizing machinery of a system that trades patient vitality for institutional inertia. It is a warning to every patient who still believes that medicine, at its heart, is a moral act.

The most damning part of all is this: no one involved appears to suffer any moral injury. No apology. No urgency. No action. Just silence.

But I will not be silent. This is my public statement—and my demand for redress.