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Texas woman who underwent 15 months of aggressive chemotherapy told she never had cancer
US woman was told she had terminal cancer and underwent 15 months of grueling chemotherapy, only to learn it was a misdiagnosis
Can you imagine being given a devastating prognosis, being told you have just 15 months to live, enduring emotional and mental trauma, and undergoing grueling chemotherapy—only to be told 15 months later that it was a diagnosis error? That's the story of Lisa Monk.
39-year-old mother of two and a higher education worker from College Station, Texas, experienced aggressive chemotherapy after being diagnosed with angiosarcoma, a rare form of blood vessel cancer, early last year. Now she has found out that she never had cancer in the first place.
The diagnosis came after Lisa experienced stomach pain, and a scan revealed a mass in her body along with kidney stones. "When the doctor told me it was cancer, I went into shock. The diagnosis was horrible, and [they] told me it was terminal," she told Daily Mail.
Lisa was told she had only a year to live
Despite the grim prognosis, Lisa kept the severity of the diagnosis from her children, opting not to share that she had been given just over a year to live. She resolved to fight the disease and began leaving memories for her children, writing letters with messages for the future weddings she would miss and the grandchildren she feared she'd never meet.
The first round of chemotherapy began in March of last year, causing Lisa to lose all her hair and leaving her with "silvery skin" and relentless vomiting. After enduring 15 months of grueling treatment, a pathology report following her second round of chemo revealed there was no cancer in her body to begin with.
"I saw the nurse practitioner first. She was scrolling on the computer while talking to me. Suddenly, she stopped talking and had this look on her face," Lisa recounted.
The nurse, looking "completely horrified," quickly left the room to fetch the doctor. "She left me alone for about 15 minutes, and then the doctor came back in. He used a lot of medical jargon and then told me I didn't have cancer," Lisa told the Mail. Instead, it was "just blood vessel activity."
"The doctor then told me that I never had cancer. At that moment, I looked like I had cancer and felt like I had cancer, as I was vomiting, sick, and my skin was silvery because of the chemotherapy," she added.
Initially, Lisa was in shock. "I was confused because they were acting like it was a bad thing. I just thought if I didn't have cancer, it meant the chemotherapy was working."
Glaring negligence by the hospital
According to The Mirror, the initial report diagnosing her with cancer had been passed on to the hospital. However, due to their policy, they had requested that Lisa undergo their own tests. Lisa claimed the hospital's test had come back clear, but they allegedly did not check their report until the April appointment, by which time she had already undergone one round of chemotherapy.
"I had chemotherapy during this time, and they could have told me a month earlier. I would have avoided the second round of chemotherapy if they had bothered to read their own pathology report," she said.
A year later, Lisa is still "angry" about everything she and her family endured due to a false diagnosis, which not only ruined her health but also "cooked" her insides. "Financially, we're still paying medical bills. Cancer is expensive, and I couldn't get any of my bills dismissed. And there's the emotional trauma too. It was a very dark time. I was writing goodbye letters and letters to the grandchildren I would never meet," Lisa shared.
