The doctor who broke Kanye West’s heart in mother’s tragic death
PUBLISHED: November 18, 2007 at 12:13 a.m. | UPDATED: January 12, 2019 at 2:31 p.m.
LOS ANGELES – The cosmetic surgeon who operated on Kanye West’s mom the day before she died makes his living telling clients they don’t have to live with their flaws.
It’s little surprise then that Dr. Jan Adams was able to forge a glitzy reputation as a sought-after TV personality and celebrity physician despite his personal blemishes.
A Daily News investigation found a past pocked by at least 10 malpractice suits, multiple convictions for DUI and allegations of battery and harassment.
By the time he appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2003, the smooth-talking Beverly Hills surgeon was on probation for a May 2003 DUI conviction. He also had a restraining order issued against him by a girlfriend who claimed his “unfortunate drinking problem” led to a violent “Jekyll and Hyde” personality.
Two years earlier, he lost two high-stakes medical malpractice cases in two months.
Former patient Barri Dennison won a judgment of $250,000 in August 2001 after claiming Adams botched an attempt to fill in facial wrinkles. Patient Gina Cloud won a $217,337 judgment a month later after accusing Adams of bungling four successive attempts to remove excess skin from around her belly button.
Oprah’s production company would not say how – or if – it vetted Adams before trotting him out as an expert. The talk show diva isn’t the first to take the dashing doctor – and former Chanel model – on his word.
Turns out the Middletown, Ohio-bred physician who said he “graduated from Harvard” on his recently shuttered Web site never received his undergraduate degree from the Ivy League school. A source in the records department said Adams completed his academic requirements, but Harvard never handed over a diploma.
“He would have received it in March 1977, but due to something he needs to resolve with the school, he didn’t get it,” the source said.
Still, Adams went on to graduate from Ohio State University’s medical school in June 1985, moved on to a general residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and finished a two-year plastic surgery residency at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in June 1992.
Adams, who always dreamed of becoming a celebrity doctor, according to one relative, quickly beat a path out west and snagged a one-year plastic surgery fellowship at UCLA.
“He came highly recommended by the University of Michigan,” said UCLA spokeswoman Roxanne Moster. “He received one year of experience in cosmetic surgery here, and he does not have any association with UCLA since completing the fellowship.”
Once through residency, Adams teamed up with an uncle who had a plastic surgery practice in Los Angeles. The uncle, Dr. Pearlman Hicks, also attended Harvard undergrad and considered Adams his protégé.
“He was with me for two years after his residency, and when he left me his skill level was fine,” Hicks told The News. “But his goal was to be a media physician when we parted ways. That could be something that overcomes you and causes lapses in judgment.”
Hicks said he was “shocked” to hear about Adams’ history of drunken driving and admitted the number of medical malpractice cases filed against his nephew – at least 10 since 1996 – seemed high.
Still, “we all have disgruntled patients,” he said. “I just want to talk to him and hear his side of the story.”
Adams, 53, has maintained a low profile since admitting he performed a combination tummy tuck and breast reduction on Kanye’s mom, Donda West, just 24 hours before she stopped breathing at her Southern California home and was rushed to an L.A. hospital where she was pronounced dead Nov. 10.
The coroner is investigating “complications of surgery” as the cause, but a definitive report will take several weeks. Adams is not certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.
As the Daily News reported last week, Adams performed the surgery at a storefront clinic above a FedEx Kinko’s in a West Los Angeles strip mall. A Beverly Hills address listed for Adams in multiple online directories turned out to be a Mail Boxes Etc. store.
Adams offered his “deepest condolences” to Kanye’s family in a statement released last week but won’t talk more until the coroner’s office returns its findings, his spokesman said.
A coroner spokesman said that if his investigator finds “some kind of gross negligence,” the coroner will turn the matter over to the Medical Board of California and the district attorney for disciplinary action.
In addition to his Oprah appearance, Adams also co-hosted NBC’s short-lived all-male answer to “The View,” called “The Other Half.” The other gabbers included Dick Clark, Danny Bonaduce and Mario Lopez.
Next, he landed a hosting gig with Discovery Health Channel’s hit makeover show “Plastic Surgery: Before and After,” which he held for five years until earlier this year.
Discovery Health yanked the show from reruns after news of Adams’ malpractice and alcohol-related problems surfaced last week.
Other accusations against Adams include a 2005 suit in which ex-model Teana Lucas claimed Adams performed liposuction surgery on her, fed her painkillers and several glasses of wine, raped her and got her pregnant. The case was settled for an undisclosed sum.
In the last 12 months, Adams’ ex-wife Susan Field claimed Adams flew into a rage after she answered the phone during Thanksgiving dinner and slapped her around in front of her son. She later obtained a restraining order.
Citing his 2002 DUI conviction and another conviction stemming from a 2006 DUI arrest, the Medical Board of California filed a complaint in April seeking to revoke or suspend Adams’ license. The complaint, which states Adams has used alcohol to an extent that could be “dangerous or injurious” to others, is pending.
DEFEND YOURSELVES AND DON'T DIE AT THE HANDS OF A DIAGNOSED NARCISSIST, not Dr. Romani who doesn't let victims even LINK her YouTubes or other specialists who don't analyze correctly, fully and completely, not just a song or song title or manipulated words, which kills, WHO TRAPS YOU AND KILLS YOU INSIDE AND OUTSIDE AND THREATENS AND DON'T HURT OTHERS EVER AND HEAL OTHERS AND STAY STRONG IN THIS PROCESS AND DON'T ALLOW PEOPLE TO DRUG YOU TO KILL YOU AND TORMENT YOUR HARD SOULS
DONDA WEST, OUR HEART, KANYE'S, IS NO LONGER WITH US AND PEOPLE FUCKED HER UP SO BAD AND STILL DO AND DON'T GIVE A DAMN (a la Taylor Swift releasing REPUTATION, the album dedicated to murdering Kanye's soul, the same day as her 10th) AND THE MEDICAL BOARD OF CALIFORNIA DIDN'T TELL US ALL SHE WAS BEING TORTURED BY A RAPIST, Jan Adams, who was granted the scalpel with no questions and no one knowing and other victims and potential victims died) THE ARTICLES IN THE MEDIA AND ON EXTRA! EXTRA! ARE BY SCARY PEOPLE WHO HURT GOD REGULARLY AND WILL TO AND LIKE TO
Taylor doesn't seek justice of others she seeks it for herself and seeks to kill anyone who combats her and has a problem expressing herself calmly and projects, and she is not who a good person is and is not who life is and is not a soulful person and doesn't understand darkness and embraces others' to hurt them and isn't the soul of the world and pretends to be without caring and steals dreams and lives and makes other suffer and likes conflict and doesn't instigate love. she loves revenge. every song on reputation is about it and a lot of the newer stuff is too and she hates lives. she wants death not life and embraces a "sad girl" thing, when she isn't sad. Violence is not the answer. Do not manipulate. Does she admit to that, too? Does she admit to seeking revenge? Blindly so, too, and has that been proven to latch onto? This doesn't happen with other people, and no one else has complained, so please stop deceiving others and causing injuries for no reason and spotting others' vulnerabilities and exploiting them!
Justice is a Justin Bieber spiritual, Selena Gomez's, a leader in the new-age mental health movement. She appears to have never been profoundly depressed nor manic and should be re-evaluated, as she is a representative of Kanye West and the melancholic depressive, and she doesn't know psychiatric nuances, none of them, and that is a terrifying picture of who to become, and must inform herself if celebrity-obsessed leaders are to enable her. You need someone who has been through more, and knows more. You must restore psychiatric knowledge, not destroy it with glitz and glamour. Misinformation is rampant. People mistake Kanye West as manic or was, and he is the only recent discloser (he is not autistic (he sounded "artistic," to be sure), that was said to hide and heal stigmas that new-age health advocates restored). This needs to be urgently fixed. Your mental health advocates are destroying years and years of work. Pete Davidson is not a victim. He is not the same as Kanye West says he is. He is a man with borderline personality disorder, which is very rare, and is different than its female counterpart. He makes people suffer, to be sure, and his ketamine regimen is not healthy, and that's why he needs to be monitored while sick, not praised.
It is not one person's fault. It takes a village. Not everyone is in the wrong because some are victimized, because it's easy to think that someone is someone else if they tell you they are and not to trust yourselves, which is paramount. But there are a lot of people who knowingly enable her, and that includes friends who hate life and embrace a motif of death instead. Vivacity is key, not sadness. Reiterating elements involved in revenge is never good. It harms and kills and actually does cause so much damage. She is unique in having the most "erotomanic stalkers" in world history, not owing solely to the rise of the internet and television (fall of print). She knows this is happening. She can't reveal marital status during peak times of confusion she creates! This will make people crazy. She knew what she was doing. You can't cover up everything with lies, but you keep moving. This is dizzying and you've made people have foggy thinking.
Minute changes in worldly thinking will occur. The greater problem is in interpersonal dealings that are enabled by these changes. This results in clear damages to others on a grander scale. Narcissists abuse selectively, so the abuse is worse. Victims who can't fight back are particularly chosen, and the world will harm them with the abuser. You can have fun with the narcissist's glare, but you'll be hung out to dry later and there's a reason you feel the way you do, and it isn't your own narcissism but feelings of power and omnipotence that she makes you think you have
Why didn't Virgil tell people he was dying? Because he's dead. She fucked us up. She made him think his cancer was unimportant for her soul, for her to get better! She fucked him up, and made him cry at night and us too, and makes us do too much, makes us cry so many times. We do not want to fuck up your brain worse than it already is, and we don't want to fuck up by scaring you even, scary! And when someone drugged Ye, and didn't protect his medical records at UCLA, he went too hard and made us forget ourselves, who we are, and what we've overcome, and Taylor Swift and her friends precipitated this shit and power structures enable it for cash and clout and they're still fucking up, and they get clearances forever and that's fucked up
this is not a joke. people are dying while you erupt into laughs
replace the vraylar (AbbVie) girl with Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. any ads? any publicity? Ted Lasso? Selena Gomez? Pete Davidson? Johnny Depp? Serial killer with an excuse? This is murderous and not sane. Is there an agenda here? Money, street sweeping, political power grabs, blessings of alcoholism and drugs?
Some people hate others and make money off it and others laugh when they ain't sad and fuck up lives, and steal for fun and that's not good
We preserve. We are dead. We are in a state of mourning, where we will stay. Love will fuck evil over. God Dances better than Devils, hard people don't laugh and talk shit, they will not crumble. They will fight evil. They will not succumb to devilish things nor temptations nor lust nor greed nor anger nor malice nor anything like that. Long Live G. AMEN!