I noticed this item on Yahoo News today about Herlinda Garcia, from Texas, who was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. After going through seven or eight rounds of chemo, it was discovered that her illness was benign, not malignant, and she never actually had cancer at all! She sued, and a jury awarded her 367,000. After her ordeal with pain and suffering and side effects from the chemo, that does not sound like anywhere near enough.
A few years ago, I lost quite a bit of weight in a short time, lost almost all the color in my complexion, (I looked like a wannabe Goth!...dark hair, very pale) and developed horrible stomach problems. Horrible. Nothing I ate agreed with me. Also, I could eat and eat and eat and eat and never feel as if I had eaten anything, and never gain a pound. In fact, I lost so much weight, while inhaling somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand calories a day, that I became dangerously underweight. I finally went to a doctor, and after hearing about my stomach problems, he decided that it MUST be colon cancer. The fact that I was also severely anemic (hemoglobin down to 6.5) seemed to be all the proof he needed. I argued that the problem with anemia had been with me for my entire life, although not always as severe, and that cancer usually kills it's victims in a much shorter span of time than I had tolerated these symptoms. Even the stomach problems were not new; albeit they were progressive: they had gotten worse over time, especially after pregnancy.
Three colonoscopies later, no one had been able to find any type of colon cancer or stomach cancer in any part of my soma; not even an ulcer. So what did the clinic recommend? That I undergo chemo, even though I did not have cancer! Outrageous! I said no. I was told I was going to die. I still said no. I researched stomach problems and found something called celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disease caused by intolerance to gluten; and is also hereditary. I was told that before insurance would approve the tests for celiac, which are almost prohibitively expensive, I would have to prove that it ran in my family! Unfortunately, most of my Dad's family had been deceased for quite some time, and no one had been diagnosed with celiac disease. There had been a "mystery stomach problem" that affected many of them, but without the diagnosis of a first degree relative, insurance would not cover the labwork. It would, however; cover chemo.
Eventually, the director of the clinic got tired of watching me suffer, and we did some genealogical research (a hobby of his) on some family members and ancestors of mine whose obituaries were either online or otherwise available to me. From those, he extracted and constructed enough of a family history consisting of a likelihood of gluten intolerance caused by celiac disease to convince insurance to cover the labwork. The results came back positive, and we also discovered that the type of anemia I have is hereditary as well, and is not the result of iron deficiency. Chemo and massive doses of iron would never have helped.
The moral of this story is that one should always question authority. Had I failed to question authority, I would have had chemo, stayed anemic, lost my hair for nothing, and still have been sick when it was all over, had I been lucky enough to survive. Because I questioned authority, the appropriate diagnosis was made, and I eventually recovered, much to chagrin of my ex husband! As an added bonus, my children are aware of hereditary autoimmune diseases, and of celiac disease, and if they, or any of their children ever develop symptoms, they will not have to suffer. Of course, pharmaceutical companies do not make money through celiac disease, as there are no medications or cures for it, other than carefully avoiding any food containing gluten. Health food stores, garden supply stores, and manufacturers of cookware are the businesses that make money because of it. That, I believe, is the real reason that insurance companies almost always refuse to cover the tests for celiac disease.
Hopefully, Herlinda Garcia can recover. Even winning a lawsuit is no substitute for simply being told from the very beginning that she did not have cancer.
A few years ago, I lost quite a bit of weight in a short time, lost almost all the color in my complexion, (I looked like a wannabe Goth!...dark hair, very pale) and developed horrible stomach problems. Horrible. Nothing I ate agreed with me. Also, I could eat and eat and eat and eat and never feel as if I had eaten anything, and never gain a pound. In fact, I lost so much weight, while inhaling somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand calories a day, that I became dangerously underweight. I finally went to a doctor, and after hearing about my stomach problems, he decided that it MUST be colon cancer. The fact that I was also severely anemic (hemoglobin down to 6.5) seemed to be all the proof he needed. I argued that the problem with anemia had been with me for my entire life, although not always as severe, and that cancer usually kills it's victims in a much shorter span of time than I had tolerated these symptoms. Even the stomach problems were not new; albeit they were progressive: they had gotten worse over time, especially after pregnancy.
Three colonoscopies later, no one had been able to find any type of colon cancer or stomach cancer in any part of my soma; not even an ulcer. So what did the clinic recommend? That I undergo chemo, even though I did not have cancer! Outrageous! I said no. I was told I was going to die. I still said no. I researched stomach problems and found something called celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disease caused by intolerance to gluten; and is also hereditary. I was told that before insurance would approve the tests for celiac, which are almost prohibitively expensive, I would have to prove that it ran in my family! Unfortunately, most of my Dad's family had been deceased for quite some time, and no one had been diagnosed with celiac disease. There had been a "mystery stomach problem" that affected many of them, but without the diagnosis of a first degree relative, insurance would not cover the labwork. It would, however; cover chemo.
Eventually, the director of the clinic got tired of watching me suffer, and we did some genealogical research (a hobby of his) on some family members and ancestors of mine whose obituaries were either online or otherwise available to me. From those, he extracted and constructed enough of a family history consisting of a likelihood of gluten intolerance caused by celiac disease to convince insurance to cover the labwork. The results came back positive, and we also discovered that the type of anemia I have is hereditary as well, and is not the result of iron deficiency. Chemo and massive doses of iron would never have helped.
The moral of this story is that one should always question authority. Had I failed to question authority, I would have had chemo, stayed anemic, lost my hair for nothing, and still have been sick when it was all over, had I been lucky enough to survive. Because I questioned authority, the appropriate diagnosis was made, and I eventually recovered, much to chagrin of my ex husband! As an added bonus, my children are aware of hereditary autoimmune diseases, and of celiac disease, and if they, or any of their children ever develop symptoms, they will not have to suffer. Of course, pharmaceutical companies do not make money through celiac disease, as there are no medications or cures for it, other than carefully avoiding any food containing gluten. Health food stores, garden supply stores, and manufacturers of cookware are the businesses that make money because of it. That, I believe, is the real reason that insurance companies almost always refuse to cover the tests for celiac disease.
Hopefully, Herlinda Garcia can recover. Even winning a lawsuit is no substitute for simply being told from the very beginning that she did not have cancer.
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