It goes without saying that an oversight in the medical field can spell the difference between life and death for patients in critical conditions. However, a doctor in Missouri was allegedly quite careless with how she dealt with a patient, leaving him with untreated cancer — for over 8 months. “Since then, everything has gotten significantly worse,” the patient’s partner states. “His exhaustion, his pain. A never-ending list of new symptoms.” It wasn’t until several days ago when the couple was reviewing medical records, that they discovered the endocrinologist’s notes saying he had medullary thyroid cancer.
“The management of the patient’s medullary thyroid cancer and elevated calcitonin and CEA levels requires regular monitoring and cooperation with their oncologist.”
“These are words that were never said to us during the appointment,” the patient’s partner claimed regarding the quotation above. “Nothing about thyroid cancer was discussed.” Prior to their shocking discovery, the endocrinologist “was very dismissive of everything and told him to just follow up in 6 months with more pituitary scans.”
The Missouri couple called the doctor’s office to make sure the notes were indeed true, and an “apologetic” nurse who answered the phone confirmed that he was diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer. Needless to say, the patient and his partner are “furious and confused” at how such a careless oversight could ever happen.
This story was posted to Reddit’s r/legaladvice, and the top comment advised that OP “look further into this before concluding that the diagnosis is accurate.” The commenter continued, “Unfortunately, doctors sometimes do document in the wrong person’s medical record. And those errors can propagate further errors.” Several replies and other users chimed in, sharing their stories of how doctors had misdiagnosed or overlooked crucial details, resulting in false alarms for medical emergencies.
“Getting a record of all of his tests undertaken and their results is important here,” remarks another Reddit user. Hundreds of others comment or upvote in agreement that OP should request their partner’s entire medical record so that they can “track down the pathology report that verified cancerous cells from a tissue sample.” Many concluded that “none of this makes any sense,” seeing how OP didn’t mention whether their partner had a biopsy being done.
A few even accused OP of making the whole detailed story up by pointing out how the Reddit account “hasn’t replied once” and only did one post. Whether the story is true or this Missouri patient’s story was made on a throwaway account, the post’s comments still contain vital takeaways.
If you accidentally discover you might have a critical health risk, it’s crucial to double-check or triple-check everything you can access to ensure the report is accurate. Otherwise, you might end up paying expensive medical bills for check-ups or treatments you didn’t need.
