Always ask for second opinion

I just read in the Internet a report from Victoria, Texas where a 54-year-old woman is trying to find sense in a life-changing diagnosis that never should have happened. The woman became “a whole different person” after she was diagnosed with Stage IV terminal breast cancer just after her benign tumor was removed from her left breast.

“When you’re told you have stage four terminal cancer, that’s it,” the woman said and put all her trust in the doctor.

Upon the advice of her doctor, the woman underwent eight rounds of chemotherapy for seven months which caused her physical health to deteriorate and her mental health to crumble. “Everything was swollen. I lost my eyebrows, my eyelashes,” she said. “It’s really hard. I can’t explain how I felt. It’s like I was in a dream.”

Finding herself falling into a depression, she said she was so sure her life was going to end and she gave away most of her belongings and made a bucket list.

For her anxiety, the woman sought treatment at a medical center. The doctors there performed some scans, and suddenly, there was a glimmer of hope. They suspected she never had cancer. A second opinion from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston confirmed it.

“I was happy, but at the same time, I had that anger. The damage had been done,” the woman said.

After investigation, it was found out that the first doctor misread the lab results and that she had been cancer-free all along. The doctor has since died but that did not stop a Victoria County jury in Texas from awarding her $367,500 in damages for physical pain and mental anguish. The woman and her husband said that doesn’t make their pain go away. Now, the woman hopes that her story encourages everyone to always get a second opinion.

What a costly mistake. I do not know that Texas woman but it is her travails that bothers me and it is for her that I write this now.

My wife has stage 4 lung cancer. It started in 2007 when she was diagnosed with a tumor in her lungs. To be sure that it was not cancerous, we agreed with our doctor for her to have a biopsy. Thank God it was not cancerous. She was just made to take some medicine and regularly checked by her doctor.

Last year, however, my wife slowly felt gasping for air when she walked fast or climbed upstairs. One day, in the middle of a forum that we attended, she excused herself to see her doctor. She never returned; her doctor found her lungs full of water and put her immediately in the hospital. That was it. The water taken from her lungs was bloody. She had a lymph node in her shoulder and a part was taken for biopsy. All indications from her bloody water and biopsy pointed to stage 4 terminal cancer.

I never had any doubt because when she went out of the hospital, she felt very weak and deteriorated fast. The doctor’s immediate advice was chemotherapy. Meanwhile, I read anything I could get from the Internet about cancer. There I met these words – targeted cancer therapy – and surmised that it was possibly her only recourse to prolong her life. So, rather than let her suffer from the side effects of radiation or chemotherapy, which I also know to cause unintended death to weak patients, we opted for targeted cancer therapy. But before we can start it she must be tested again if she qualifies for it. Not all lung cancer patient qualify for this treatment. Some tests are needed. We had to send her specimen to Manila. The result was all right. She can take the daily dose of medicine in tablet form.

I am not confident to explain here why she qualified or how targeted cancer therapy works so I leave it at that. Suffice it to say that with the treatment, her tumor was supposed to shrink and her cancer cells were supposed to be prevented from attacking other cells. Did it work? Well, the last two scans revealed her tumor was slightly getting smaller. But what really amazed me was that my wife was feeling much better after she started the therapy. Any one we meet can’t believe she has terminal cancer. However, I also know from my readings that her cancer cells may develop resistance to the drug anytime. Because of this, we see to it that she had no other illness and remained strong all the time and would pray. The other problem is when she misses taking her daily dose of medicine which is expensive.

Back to that mistaken diagnosis of the Texas woman. As a cancer patient, my wife regularly goes to her doctor for check-ups, and to the hospital for various lab tests, including CT scanning and bone scanning. In the process, we meet other cancer patients and talk. What struck me after reading about the Texas woman is that some of the patients we met told us of their own experience and others they know of being misdiagnosed for cancer which was found out after seeking a second or third opinion.

After hearing them, I wonder how many people in the country today have been mentally tortured by the mistaken knowledge of a very serious illness as cancer infecting him or her and the unnecessary suffering they had to undergo in rounds of radiation or chemotherapy. Be reminded therefore of what the Texas woman wishes us to do. When diagnosed for cancer or any other grave illness, always seek a second or third opinion.

I had my own bad experience when sight in my right eye was failing in the early 1990s. My doctor immediately did something about it. I trusted him. My sight worsened instead. Looking back, I should have asked for a second opinion and carefully studied alternatives for treatment. Today I can no longer read with my right eye no matter what eyeglasses I use. That’s true even after my cataract was removed last year. The damage was done.