TSA Chief Apologizes To Bladder Cancer Survivor After Excruciating Experience In Detroit

The story retired teacher Thomas Sawyer tells of his experience at the hands of a TSA officer at Detroit’s airport makes you want to scream at the TSA agent and give Mr. Sawyer a hug–and now TSA Chief John Pistole has called to apologize.

Sawyer, a cancer survivor, lost his bladder and has a urostomy bag attached to his body under his clothing. When a body scanner picked up the bag at a security checkpoint, Sawyer was pulled aside for an enhanced pat down. As Sawyer recounted the story Monday on CNN’s American Morning, what happened next was avoidable–and humiliating:

“He started to talk about the pat down procedure and I said I need to tell you about my medical condition. He said, no you don’t need to tell me, and I said no, really, I have to…He proceeded just with the pat down. When he got to my chest area, he used his open palm and started going down my chest quite hard. And I knew if he got down near where my urostomy bag was, there was a possibility of pulling the seal off of it.”

Mr. Sawyer warned the TSA agent to go slow and soft at risk of tearing away the tube connected to Mr. Sawyer’s stomach, but that didn’t happen. “Once that happened, it was kind of like pulling the seal off a container of orange juice and turning it upside down,” said Sawyer, who says “one of the biggest fears of ostomy patients is having a leak in public.”

“These people need to be trained in physical conditions–and emotional conditions.”

Your heart really goes out to the guy, and then there’s this: The TSA agent, Sawyer says, never apologized–leaving the gentle retiree to clean himself up in an airport bathroom before traveling on to Orlando.

Sawyer has now received an apology–from the man in charge, who called on Monday afternoon to express his regrets.

Watch the interview, from CNN: