The Surgeon Who Was "Too Sad" to Tell His Liver From His Spleen

So here's a story for you. A 44-year-old Florida surgeon, Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky, got arrested a few weeks ago for killing a 70-year-old man by cutting out his liver instead of his spleen. When they finally dragged him into court and asked him to explain himself, he said he was "too sad" to tell the difference. "Too sad." That's what he told the grand jury. That he was so emotionally devastated by the possibility of losing his patient that he just... couldn't function. Couldn't tell a liver from a spleen. Couldn't, you know, not kill someone. Let that sink in for a moment. I've been following medical malpractice cases for years, and I've seen a lot of excuses. But "I was too sad to do my job" might be the most nakedly bizarre one yet. This isn't a resident who botched their first procedure. This is a board-certified surgeon who had already paid out $400,000 in 2024 for another malpractice case—a 70-year-old woman who died of sepsis after he nicked her pancreas while trying to remove her adrenal gland. He told her family the adrenal gland had "shifted." And yet he was still in the OR. Still cutting people open. Still allowed to practice. Here's what happened to William Bryan, the man who paid the price for all of this. He was a 70-year-old from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, traveling through Florida with his wife Beverly when he got some stomach pain. Nothing crazy. Just belly pain. He went to Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital, and they found an enlarged spleen with some fluid in his abdomen. But here's the thing—Bryan initially said no to surgery. He wanted to go back home to Alabama, where he could get treatment at a facility he knew and trusted. His family had higher-level care options there. But Shaknovsky kept pressuring him. Kept telling him the surgery was necessary. Kept pushing until a 70-year-old man away from home finally gave in. How do you sleep at night pressuring a man far from home into a surgery he doesn't want? The surgery was supposed to be laparoscopic—a few small incisions, a camera, the whole thing. Minimally invasive. But then Shaknovsky made his first wrong turn: he couldn't see because Bryan's colon was swollen, so he switched to open surgery. Big incision. Full exposure. From that moment, things went sideways.