Celebrity News January 31, 2008
Dr. Adams Reveals Unknown Details About Donda's Death
Dr. Jan Adams, the most controversial surgeon in America, is ready to answer the questions he's never answered before.
Months after Kayne West's mother Donda died following plastic surgery, "Extra" put Adams on the hot seat and he finally got personal.
"I didn't just lose a patient," Adams says, "I lost a friend."
Reports suggested Adams abandoned Donda after surgery, but for the first time, he reveals he never lost contact with her during her final hours.
"I was there all along," he contends. "I had talked to her twice that day."
He continues, "I talked to her, I talked to the family, I met them at the hospital so I was there the whole time. I had a pretty good idea of what had transpired in terms of her care once she was outside of our direct care."
Was Donda, 58, anxious about the surgery?
"I do want to keep our conversations private, and I mean by that, the conversations I had with my patient," he insists.
Adams will say he empathizes with Kanye, because like the music mogul, he, too, was raised by a single mother.
"I grew up in a single parent home," he says. "That's who this was the hardest on, was my mom, because she takes it personally."
He also regrets the toll the scandal took on Oprah, who came under fire after reports surfaced that Donda contacted him after watching "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
"This wasn't a person who was uninformed. This was a very smart woman; she actually had read my book," he blasts. "Here's this wonderful lady who dedicated her life to helping people and they tried to ridicule her."
Still, he's not entirely blaming the media.
“I think the media are human beings doing a job," he says. But doctor/patient confidentially kept him from speaking out.
“Truly, the hard part is to sit there and shut up while all this is going on,” Adams explains.
That's also why he walked out on Larry King during a taping of his show.
“I thought it was the appropriate thing to do," he contends. "If it's against the law for me to talk about a patient, isn't it against the law for a reporter to ask me? I think I did Larry a favor.”
Though Donda's autopsy found she most likely died of heart disease along with complications from cosmetic surgery, Adams says he still felt grief.
Adams says, "The autopsy report tells me what I already believed. In spite of that, it doesn't change the fact it's still sad from where I sit."
Adams' once-bustling plastic surgery practice has slowed since the scandal. "I've done a few surgeries," he says, "not a whole lot."
And not only have his patients abandoned him, but so has his girlfriend.
"My girlfriend bolted," he reveals. "She was at a function and there was someone taking a picture of us and it ended up on some tabloid, and that was too invasive for her."
Did he ever think about changing his career?
"When I started out on this journey what I really wanted to do was heal the wounds of the injured, and that hasn't changed for me," he says.
Adams believes he's in the clear criminally, but now the big question: Will Kanye's family sue him? Adams' lawyer, Michael Payne, says, "Frankly, I think we'll just have to wait and see. I don't necessarily anticipate that, but one can never tell."
For now, Adams has some healing to do.
"I don't think I'll ever get over it," he admits. "It will go with me forever."