When it comes to establishing which of my personal medical experiences ranked number one in interest, I can think of only one situation that clearly meets my definition of “interesting”. During my years, I have had a half dozen candidates for the most interesting come up. I put my “navel operation while I was in the naval service”, on the list. Certainly the overall experience of when I had the hernia act up while driving a tour bus must also be included on any list. But this story is about the medical experience that I judge to be the most interesting.

It was a situation that gradually began to occur one day during 1969 or 1970. I was on my way to work at Northrop one morning, and I was driving my 1958 Volkswagen Beatle. I was going south on Euclid Avenue in Fullerton at the time when I noticed a very unusual feeling developing in my upper left arm. It began bothering me enough that I finally pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car and did some physical stretches. These included rotating my arms around and around, and using my arms to push and pull against a nearby telephone pole. These activities helped a little, so after a few minutes I went on to work.

Already in those days I was often arriving at work an hour or so early. I was still concerned about that very unusual happening, so sharply at eight o’clock I was in the nurses office in Plant One at Northrop. After a few minutes of listening to what I had to say and making a few checks of her own, she suggested that I go and see my personal physician.

Now, what do you do when you do not have your own physician. Well, you ask the nurse. “We are not allowed to recommend any specific physician, but we can provide a list of physicians who provide services in the Anaheim area”, I am told. The list included some clinics as well. The biggest concern I had after my visit with the nurse was that I did not receive any expert advice - but I did receive information.

So I flipped the coin and made a phone call. I called a “heart” clinic which was located quite near the St. Jude Hospital in Fullerton. I was given an appointment to see a Doctor Foster at 10 am.

I went to this clinic at Harbor and Bastanchury in Fullerton and spent some time there with this Doctor Foster where he ordered a EKG, a blood test, and probably three or four other significant tests. I left there with some advice - get involved in a exercise routine, cut down on dairy products, and start taking an instant breakfast every morning, and take the rest of the day off.

I was impressed that the Doctor had given me some good advice. I must have really liked that last recommendation because I left there and went straight home, told Virginia all about what I had experienced, and dived into bed for the rest of the day. Of course the very next day I felt that I had recovered from whatever, and went back to work.

Is the story exciting yet? A little bit interesting, maybe? Well, this story does not stop here. We are just now getting to the interesting part. A little before 6 am on a Sunday about two weeks later, the phone rang, and it rang, and it rang. Eventually, I finally found the phone and answered this persistent call. “My name is Doctor Diamond and I am a physician at the XYZ clinic in Fullerton”, the caller said. (I do not remember the actual clinic name).

“I am phoning you”, the caller continued, “because a few weeks ago you were a patient of a Doctor Foster at our clinic.” “Last night, we discovered that the person you saw, identified as Doctor Foster, was not the real Doctor Foster.” Oh boy! This story might get interesting after all!

“Because of the nature of my complaint”, this Doctor Diamond wanted to know whether I could come in that morning - a Sunday - so that they might be able to run some additional tests to verify that I do not have really serious problem. During the two weeks since the occurrence of that “medical event”, nothing else had happened. So we eventually set the next Tuesday as a better time when we could do those additional tests.

I went to see Doctor Diamond on Tuesday and he prescribed a number of additional tests, and he spent a lot more time with me than Doctor Foster had. Eventually I went my own way and to this date have not had any recurrence of that medical problem.

The story behind this story is that Doctor Diamond had been attending a cocktail party on the Saturday night before. During a social conversation with a lady that evening, he had been told that she was pleased to hear that her cousin was back in California working from his clinic. The conversation went on, and after a few more unusual items had been identified, the lady decided to try to call her cousin, Doctor Foster, at his Alabama home and check out whether it was actually him that was now working in the Fullerton clinic.

Long story short, Doctor Foster was still teaching at the University of Alabama Medical School. After a few additional late night calls it was uncovered that the California medical license number held by the Alabama-based Doctor Foster was the same number that had been provided by this new Doctor Foster at the Fullerton clinic. So, Doctor Diamond probably did not get any sleep that night.

The first phone call that Doctor Diamond made on that Sunday morning must have been to me - a person with a possible heart problem. Later Diamond told me that this Doctor Foster had seen 84 “heart” patients during his time with the clinic. In almost every case, including mine, the imposter Foster had “consulted” with other Doctors in the clinic about his decisions and recorded these consultations on the patient records. Four of his patients had died during that timeframe. Luckily, I was not one of them.

The real name of this fake Doctor was Brown according to the court records. He had been a navy medic during his service years and then went to work at the University of Alabama Medical University where the real Doctor Foster came to be a professor there. He obtained Foster’s California license number and other information about his past experience during those years. Brown eventually answered an ad in a medical journal responding to the Fullerton clinic need.

But this is not all to this story. In Florida, before Brown went to work at the University of Alabama, he had been arrested for impersonating a licensed electrical engineer. He got probation in Florida. Brown was sentenced to ten years in prison for this Fullerton deal. Brown went to jail and as is a common practice, he was released early because he was a model prisoner.

Postscript: About ten years after Brown, also known as Doctor Foster the Imposter, had been sentenced in Orange County, I received a letter that had no return address. It had been postmarked in some town up in the San Francisco bay area. Within the letter there was a newspaper clipping. I figure that the clipping had been sent by someone who had heard about my experience during the time I was working as a subcontractor for Lockheed Sunnyvale. The headline on this newspaper clipping was “ Practice Does Not Make Perfect”. Do I have to now tell you that it was the same navy medic named Brown who had tried to be a Doctor without a license one more time?

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