Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Damaris Mccalley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Damaris, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

The most unexpected problem I faced in my creative journey was a medical nightmare I faced which physically disabled me and was compounded by an unjust law in Texas called Chapter 74 Tort Reform. Oddly enough, although that law hits persons with Disabilities, children and the elderly injured in Texas by doctors and hospitals the hardest, placing a cap on damages and human suffering. It was enacted by a person with Disabilities like myself against our interests. That person is unfortunately our current Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. That led me to be the first Pro-se Litigant and Disabled Person to ever Challenge the Constitutionality of Tort Reform at the level of The Texas Supreme Court and now The U.S. Supreme Court.

My medical nightmare began in 2017 when I had been misdiagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis with when I was actually suffering from Crohn’s Disease. I was hospitalized with a GI flare merely months after the birth of my second son, and I was told by the doctors that because I had Ulcerative Collitis, if I allowed them to operate to remove my colon and create something called a j-pouch it would be curative. I was told I would need a temporary illiostomy, which is a protrusion of the intestines through the abdomen wall to empty into a pouch for a few months and it would be a series of 3 surgeries. The doctors and hospital did no CT imaging or tests to rule out Crohn’s Disease which affects the entire GI tract from mouth to rectum, for which a j-pouch surgery is not only not curative, but can be disasterous. When I saw what all the surgeries entailed and I was young fit 27 year old I said I wanted to leave the hospital and wait a bit to see if the post partum flare calmed as it did with my first son, perhaps have a second opinion. I did not know that the hospital I was at, Methodist Southlake Hospital, was a physician owned hospital where physicians have a bit of a conflict of interest in recommending surgeries and prolonged stays because they have a vested interest in the profits thereof beyond their physician fees. Furthermore, I did not know that the hospital was in bankruptcy at the time and in dire need of funds, I learned that after from subsequent patients with similar bad experiences and former nursing staff. When I said no to the surgical option I was with my then husband. The doctors waited until he left with my infant son and 6 year old to surround my bed and tell me that if I wanted to be a good mother for my sons and wanted to see them grow up I had to risk the dangerous surgeries. I wondered why as I had no intestine rupture and asked them if I was going to die and when if I did not. They responded that they could not tell me when I was going to die, there was no time frame, but I was going to die. Looking back I do not know why I didn’t compute that of course we are all going to die, who knows when, but I unfortunately trusted the doctors had my best interests in mind. Still, I was not sure I told them, despite being pressured and them insinuating that if I cared about my children I must ignore my gut instinct and do what they told me to. The doctors left the room. The surgeon then came to me alone and asked why I didn’t love the idea of amputating my entire colon. I told him it was a very foreign and sudden notion to have an illiostomy bag and many surgeries and scarring when I was a fitness competitor. He then told me to reach out to a former patient of his on Instagram and she sung his praises so much I finally caved in and agreed.

That is where things went from bad to worse. Apparently in the first operation the surgeon placed two clips to stop bleeding from the blood vessels near the ureter. Unfortunately apparently he caught the left urater (which is the tube that connects the kidneys and the bladder) in these clips and did not notice. When I awoke I could not urinate and when I finally did the nurses were alarmed by the appearance of blood and mentioned to myself and each other they thought something had gone wrong and would alert the physicians. They did a scan of the bladder and it showed I wasn’t properly voiding. Still, somehow no physician followed up on these critical warning signs and I was dismissed around post op day 6. In the weeks and months following the first operation (operation 2 couldn’t occur until at least 3 months of healing) I felt my condition was getting worse not better. I was vomiting alot, felt weak, dizzy and was in alot of pain. My illiostomy bag was filling with a yellow green water faster than I could empty it on many days. I tried not to cry at my follow up appointments with my surgeon and tried to be brave but tears involuntarily streamed down my cheeks and he wrote down that I cried in my medical chart. He told me he would not give me the second operation to create the j-pouch until I told him I was doing better. I was desperate, I was certainly not better than before the operations but I did not sign up to have an illiostomy bag at my side for the rest of my life when I had been a fitness model. He made me feel as if my pain was my fault or I was being emotional and weak. The next appointment I kept a stiff upper lip and he agreed to the second operation.

In the second operation my Coleorectal surgeon must have seen what he did and tried to reimplant the ureter himself because he used a blue contrast dye in the ureter he did not use in the first surgery which would have leaked into the cavity if the ureter was severed and would not have made it to the bladder if fully blocked. He failed to call in a urologist to repair it, which most doctors would agree is almost criminally negligent as most coleorectal surgeons have a urologist on standby in case of such an incident and should never attempt such an intricate urological proceedure. In my case after 3 months of being clipped there was death of the tissue and the ureter could not stretch the length between the bladder and kidney to be reconnected. So foolishly, he apparently tried to make new incisions to shorten the distance to the kidney and this also failed because he did not know what he was doing. At this point my urater was not only clipped, but also fully severed at a certain portion. Again, instead of calling in a urologist immediately for another operation to save me, he left the clip on the urater and finished the GI portion of the proceedure. He then sewed me up and refused to see me himself after he operated. I told his Physicians Assistant, the Hospital and the Surgeon’s office daily how much pain I was in and it was so bad that pain medicine was not curbing it and I could not sleep. Instead of properly medicating me or ordering a CT to see what was wrong the doctor and hospital ordered me dismissed without ANY pain medication I could take on post op day two, when it was supposed to be a 5 day hospitalization. They had ordered me only Tramadol which I told them I was alergic to. I again called the surgeon’s office begging for pain medication in the following days as my my abdomen had been gutted, I had a fever and yellow water was seeping from the incisions. I was told by the surgeon on the phone that I was fine despite the fact I told him I was in so much pain I was shaking and did not need pain medication and not to return to the ER, he would not see me himself, his staff would remove my sutures. Nine days later and I was screaming in pain so I went against his medical advice to save my own life to another ER closer to my house in Arlington.

Unfortunately, the hospital I went to in the middle of the night was another Methodist Hospital, the one in Mansfield. Upon my arrival they did a CT which showed a clip on my urater and that I was about to lose my left kidney from hydronephrosis. They also did a renal ultrasound of the kidney showing further issues that the hospital refuses to give me a copy of to present day. They immediately called my surgeon and several of the ER physicians spoke to him without my knowledge. The coverup had begun. They told me they were going to try to stent the urater in the morning and if that wasn’t successful they would have to place a tube in my back and a catheter to drain my kidney until repair operations could occur in future months. When I spoke to my surgeon about the situation in the morning, he falsely claimed on a recorded line that it was the first he was hearing of the situation and he did not know what occurred to my urater. So I underwent two operations at that hospital, one to try to clear a blockage which was impossible as the urater was also severed and another to place a nephrostomy tube in my back. These operations were assisted by radiological imaging techniques both with contrast and ultrasound as well as robotic laparascope cameras capturing the entire thing but although this is clearly documented in the written record, Methodist Hospital refuses to give me the radiology associated with the operations. This appears to be to conseal the fact that there were also gashes in the kidney they did not want me knowing about. Most hospitals in the DFW area and Texas in general have “risk management” “record sharing” agreements. Many of them utilize Epic Software which has a portion in the digital EMR Record called “Physician Chats” where doctors can hide pertinent medical history related to medical malpractice from the patient, yet alert other doctors and hospitals to the problem so they can be treated without the patient’s knowledge or consent. They refuse to allow me to see this lengthy portion of my own medical records. This is to avoid making medical malpractice payouts in aggregious cases such as my own. When I asked the doctors questions about the proceedures and what my original surgeon had told them or done, I taped it on my phone. They said they did not want to tell me what my surgeon had done to me, that was between me and him and I had to return to him for him to tell me. This was of course grossly unfair. Again I was dismissed way earlier than I should have been, the very morning as I underwent two operations. It was like if I died they did not want it to be on hospital property, so they could claim some other cause of death. A study from John Hopkins University from 2018 had 250,000 people annually dying from medical error, making it the third leading cause of death. According to Mcgill University, that number rose to 44o,000 in 2021.

So from there, because I was dismissed too early again I developed another life threatening infection, abcess and a urine leak inside my body which should not have happened as the ureter was bypassed by a nephrostomy tube unless there were in fact cuts to the kidney itself which showed up on later radiology. Here’s where things get incredible: I only discovered this by looking at the actual radiology itself versus the radiologist’s readouts at UT Southwestern, the Government funded Hospital where I was allegedly “fixed”. I did not discover this until years later. Why? Because when I went to UT Southwestern all the doctors and radiologists lied to my face and said there was no clip on my ureter. I told them that was impossible, the ER doctor had shown me the actual scan at Methodist Mansfield Hospital and I had seen clip like objects on it and all the doctors confirmed those findings to myself, my mother and husband. UT Southwestern just said all of the doctors, including the ones who had operated on me to place the nephrostomy tube were mistaken or lied. I did not know who to believe. When seeking attorneys that became a huge problem because they told me if there was a clip on the urater placed in the first surgery then it would be aggregious malpractice, basically attempted murder or at least would have amounted to manslaughter had I not survived. But simply a severed urater was a somewhat common complication of the J-pouch surgery I underwent. I told the attorneys that I had not been warned that urological issues could even be a complication and they told me I was correct, and it was malpractice for him not to inform me or give me a second opinion but Chapter 74 Tort Reform in Texas placed such stringent caps on damages on malpractice that it could cost a lawfirm 50,000-95,000 to take my case to trial and may not be profitable. Even worse, should the judge choose to throw out expert reports in collusion with the Defense my law firm would have to pay for the doctors and hospitals who permanently maimed and disabled me’s legal fees!

So these lies from UT Southwestern about there not being clips on my urater combined with Chapter 74 Tort Reform robbed me of the ability to retain an attorney in a timely manner. So I began to do some investigation myself and went back to the original imaging and discovered after re-reads by other radiologists that not only was there of course clips on the urater but there were surgical clips all over other areas of the body allegedly never operated on, such as in the Messentary and transverse to the Pancreas. There are also areas of scarring which appear to correlate with small cuts to the left kidney. It gets worse: I had been treated from 2017 to 2020 at UT Southwestern and the entire time, although I had NO COLON they were telling me the reason I kept getting sick and was being hospitalized was from Ulcerative Colitis. I told them it was impossible, I had no colon, I must have in fact always had Crohn’s disease since I had been having upper GI issues for years. They continued to lie to me and make me feel I was crazy until I became suicidal during a hospitalization wanting to jump out of a window. There was also a hospital stay that my insurance would not pay for because I had been hospitalized with flank pain from a left kidney infection and a small bowel obstruction from Crohn’s Disease ( confirmed by multiple other physicians upon viewing the medications administered to me and the radiology post fact). Insurance would not pay because UT Southwestern refused to send my private insurance any medical records and just wrote that I had a “stomach ache” which required a 4 day hospitalization over the 4th of July 2019 Holliday. I remember watching fireworks from the floor to ceiling windows of UT Southwestern and crying alone on the Organ Donor Recipient Floor. I was often kept on the organ transplant floor of the hospital which prevented my baby from being allowed inside my room to visit me. To this day UT Southwestern will neither confirm nor deny that I have received organ donor tissue. I have found passages in my medical records subsequently stating that I had a nephroureteronectomy which means a portion of my left kidney was removed. There is correllating scarring to confirm that on subsequent CT’s. Well after that and seeing some of the radiology I became convinced that I was being lied to and began to seek care with GI doctors and urologists outside of UT Southwestern. Unfortunately, the evil genius of the “record sharing agreements” is that any hospital I go to, my medical records from UT Southwestern preceede me. And doctors simply will not disclose certain things to me, including my lab results because they are trying to conseal the operations without consent.

Just a few months ago I went to Medical City in Lewisville with left flank pain which appeared to be another kidney infection and was dismissed this time without even being treated with antibiotics. They had run a bunch of urological labs and when I asked to see the results the ER Physician said I was not privy to that information and was being dismissed with a “stomach ache” and “unexplained abdominal pain” when there was visible blood in my urine. I told him it was my right to see the lab results if he was telling the truth and he became afraid and called the police to threaten to remove me. I opted to walk out the hospital doors instead and immediately downloaded the hospital records portal app. I opened my results to see my GFR had dropped to 72 again which is almost kidney failure, I had white blood cells, red blood cells and hyaline casts in my urine. When I got my radiology disk days later it showed an infected and disintegrating left kidney. The doctor had not called in antibiotics to treat the kidney infection as he did not want to admit I had one, so I had to buy them from an animal feed store called “Tractor Supply”.

Through all of this I took the doctors and hospitals to court as a Pro Se Litigant because I know I am going to need a new left kidney at some point and I was finally properly diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease during the course of litigation. Crohn’s Disease means that a J-pouch surgery was never the right surgery to begin with and I will need many more surgeries down the line. It turns out that my original surgeon has lost multiple malpractice lawsuits alleging similar tales as mine, with at least three other victims I personally know of who have reported him to the Texas Medical Board. I checked the surgeon’s medical license before I agreed to let him operate on me and it showed no prior Board actions against him and no lost lawsuits. He has both. He is a clear and public danger but a corrupt Medical Board refuses to update his medical license for unexplained reasons. The only thing that makes sense is bribery. The medical malpractice attorneys of both the surgeon and Methodist Southlake Hospital were in communications with the Legal Department during my stays there, telling them what to and what not to disclose to me about my injuries. Last time I counted, it has been 9 surgeries to fix what all began in 2017.

Because a U.S. Government funded Hospital, UT Southwestern is involved in this despicable situation the Office of Civil Rights refuses to enforce my requests for my medical records. The state cases and Texas Supreme Court cases tossed out my case in one sided hearings with the Defendants and the Texas Attorney General Counsel despite me issuing the proper medical expert reports to take my case to trial. I seeked Federal Injunction to stop the state from dismissing my cases and allow me to attend hearings in my own case and the Federal Judges refused to enforce my Constitutional Right to Due Process. They have done the same thing with the Federal Cases I sparked to gain access to my medical records on my kidney including the ultrasounds so I can get proper treatment. Shut them down, despite me having a Constitutional Challenge to Tort Reform. I have been diagnosed with Accute Anxiety and Trauma and have had therapists and physicians write the court saying they must provide me counsel under the Americans With Disabilities Act because forcing me to go through this myself is traumatic and impossible. I also have ADD, a learning disability which makes becoming an attorney overnight and reading all the rules impossible. I have provided this documentation now to the U.S. Supreme Court, who refuses to respond or acknowledge my written requests or answer my phone calls for months as they do other citizens. They purposely referred to me in male pronouns to troll me and let me know I will not even be heard, the same as The Texas Medical Board did and The Office of Civil Rights and a Federal Judge did. I am very clearly a woman and all of my filings and medical records say so. They do not have the A.D.A. Congressionally mandated “Disability Coordinator” to help me through a Supreme Court “Writ of Certerion” submission process. For this reason, they have broken the law and opened themselves up to “extrajudicial activity” and “abuse of judicial discretion”. They can now be sued under a law called U.S.C 1843 for abuse of office “under color of law”. So shortly, it is so crazy to say this, but it HAS to be done to bring attention to what is going on in the medical industry in Texas: I am going to be the first American to ever sue the U.S. Supreme Court.

My whole life I have been told by those around me that I am a strong person, a brave person and a resillient person when I have not felt that way. But over time, you hear things enough that you know they must be true. I feel that I was chosen by whatever higher power there may be to be the one to bear these horrific injuries and the continuous and constant subsequent injustices, defeats and humilliations because anyone else would have cowered in a corner and given up. They even had an attorney from Colorado named “Earl Edwards” impersonate one of my physicians online, pretending to want to buy art hoping I wouldn’t properly report the funds to the social security administration and violate the terms of my SSI. Then when I discovered the scheme and his true identity (boomers shouldn’t try to trick millenials over G-mail, the whole time he was emailing me under a false name his profile photograph was visible! LOL) he began to sexually harass me, make racially disparaging and gender disparaging remarks. When that did not work he told me he was going to fly down here from Colorado to “beat my a++. Anyways anyone would be scared after that. I told authorities but they refused to take any action to prevent further harassment or protect me. Alot of my friends and family have warned me that I am going against very powerful people and they are afraid I might end up dead. Well, everyone dies, and never in my life have I liked or tollerated a bully. Chapter 74 Tort Reform has silenced many victims of medical malpractice who have not had the tenacity I have, and I feel it is my personal responsibility to expose what is going on with these risk management agreements between hospitals. My art has been on the backburner in the meantime but hopefully I can make the change I need and get back to it soon.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My original main medium and concentration was oil paintings. Unfortunately due to the medical/legal crusade I was thrust into I don’t often have time to begin and complete an oil painting as just one can take months. Having two young children also makes having paintings that stay wet for weeks problematic as my 5 year old loves nothing more than to join me creating art. Hospital stays and illnesses also interrupt the oil painting process so I have been doing more watercolors as they are quicker, physically easier to move and store and can be done from a sick bed if needed. My inclination with oil paintings is to work in a neoclassical fashion, whereas my watercolors are more whimsical. I do a bit of portraits as well and find these works much easier to create and sell as they are not personal to me or my creative “babies” but other people’s children and loved ones. I always feel honored to make someone’s portrait as they are trusting you to really see them deeply and translate their memory to art. I lately have had so little time to create art I sometimes just take pictures, either as the photographer or as the model. I enjoy cosplay and fantasy stuff because it’s super fun and transports me out of my physical reality which is often quite heavy and limiting. I need a little joy in my life to help me get through the difficult legal and activist work I’m engaged in. Most people, when they look at me, have no idea that I am legally considered to be disabled because I appear normal on the outside. The thing is, even when I had a urine cathether coming out of my back and strapped to my leg and an illiostomy bag protruding from my stomach, nobody knew. People often hide their struggles to protect themselves from ridicule or pity etc. We have this idea as a society of what a disabled person “looks like” and it is often a stereotype of a person in a wheelchair, on crutches, lacking hair from chemotherapy or elderly and frail. They don’t look like me. And I guess that is part of why I enjoy taking pictures and modelling, because it is something as a former fitness competitor and model I never thought I would get to do again. I like to challenge people’s notions of what Disability should or can look like as much as I need to break through my own previous misconceptions. Surprising myself is always nice. Art extends to all things, art is in images, words and creativity. Every day we create ourselves and project that image out into the world. I have been helping people and businesses craft their images through logo creation and social media content/presence lately. I really like that because it is experimental and fun and allows people to see themselves and hone in their missions in different ways. I do chalk festival or event temporary murals, window murals, and regular paint on wall murals as well when health gives me break to do so.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

To please start paying and employing artists just as you would any private contractor such as a home builder, a landscaper, a dog trainer, a childcare worker etc. Artists cannot survive on “exposure” and it is degrading to suggest anyone should work for free, especially in a craft that takes years of struggle to hone. It devalues and demoralizes the endeavor. The world is not only more beautiful with art, it is necessary to ease the human condition. “Art History” is really the history of Humanity and the evolution of consciousness. Art separates us from the monotony of machines but connects us to other life forms such as plants and animals through their depiction and the translation of their essence. When humans first found light in ancient caves, they took pigments and blood to weave a tapestry of dreams and rituals onto the ceilings. And in the holiest places where we believe our God or Gods reside.. in Mosques, Ashrams, Teepees, Temples and the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.. there we placed art as a form of worship and honor. If you think about prisons, which are meant to be demoralizing, dehumanizing places, they are largely devoid of identifying architecture with gray colors, blank walls and cinderblocks. We humans associate a lack of art, a lack of uniqueness, with the presence of oppression and a lack of hope. Art is not optional for a healthy society and art has been cultivated, funded and employed in Europe for millenia. The concept of art as a luxury, expendible or optional, I would argue is actually a rather new, rather American sentiment. I don’t think even in Europe the concept or myth of “the starving artist” existed until the advent of Impressionism and modern art in Europe (think Van Gogh) when artists purposely broke with guilds and academies which had sustained them. If you think Art is expendible, look back to dictatorships and WW2. What did Hitler and the Nazi’s do to gain possession and control of a populace? They stole art from the walls first and hid it in underground tunnels then they branded people with their own arm bands and tattoos. Then they stole hats and shoes and sustenance, then they stole bodies. A society which does not value art and properly fund it is a society on the brink.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Getting to bring beauty to the world is a wonderful thing. It is a rebellious and liberating move to create art in times of darkness. To surprise someone with something utterly unexpected is so fun; art for art’s sake, if you will. Where there is art, there is hope. There is a reason why we teach children to color and draw before they write. It comes naturally to humans. A drawing of a tree looks far more like a tree than the four letters in sequence or word “tree”. Art breaks language barriers and often cultural barriers. It is also magical getting to bring something I think of in my head, a foreign or abstract concept or dream, and using paint to make it visible to anyone who can see. There is an alchemy to it. It is something greater than the sum of it’s parts, something out of nothing. If there is a Creator or God force out there in the universe making all that there is, in the process of making art we are a microcosm of that wavelength. We get to play too.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.damarisartistry.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/damarismccalley
• Facebook: @damarisartistry