Kunz, K

Had a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry, completed Internal Medicine Residency then Oncology Fellowship in Arizona where he met the love of his life.  They married and moved back to NC where her parents lived and where she had always wanted to live.  As their careers developed, he blended his love for medicine and research, running 5 oncology clinics while doing biochemistry research.  His wife cut her practice back after the birth of their first child.  Shortly thereafter Sharon became pregnant again and stopped practicing.  Post-partum depression became a significant problem for her.  She resisted treatment.  Her husband was quite busy with his clinical duties and failed to appreciate the severity of her suffering, but noted that on some days she seemed very upbeat, so he continued to do his best to provide for them.

She had apparently gotten hooked on pain pills and cocaine. The cocaine explained her “up” days and worsened her “down” days.  She died in an accidental overdose in 2002.

Overcome with grief, he started drinking, but found himself in treatment before anything worse happened.  When he left the treatment center a few months later, the state filed felony charges against him for drug trafficking, reasoning that since he’s a physician, he must have been supplying her with the drugs she overdosed on.

The problem with that theory, is that the only medicinal use for cocaine is as a liquid for topical anesthesia for nasal surgery, a form that is very difficult to abuse and rarely used even by ENT surgeon’s; there were no prescriptions for it.

Due to the felony charges against him, with the grief and demands of two very young children to raise; he moved to Vancouver BC where he was from and where his family remained. He ended up raising his children while living in his sister’s attic.

To this day, over a decade later, he’s unable to get a medical license in Canada due to the history with the NCMB and the criminal charges that had been filed against him.