A mother of two from Texas claimed that she underwent “very intensive” chemotherapy sessions only to discover she never had cancer in the first place. Lisa Monk, 39, went to the hospital in 2022 for stomach pains that she thought were kidney stones.
Tests revealed two kidney stones and a mass on her spleen which was successfully removed through surgery in January last year, New York Post reported.
The spleen was sent to three pathology labs for testing and came out positive for a rare and terminal form of cancer on the fourth time. According to the Mirror, Monk was diagnosed with clear cell angiosarcoma. It is considered to be a type of cancer with poor prognosis regardless of age and gender. “It was a blood vessel type of cancer found in the spleen and told me that the most optimistic thing he could say was to give me 15 months [to live],” Monk said.
Monk then proceeded to tell the horrific news to her family which left them distraught. Then came then “aggressive” chemotherapy sessions. In the first round, she lost all her hair and she was left vomiting with silvery skin in the second round. “It was a very dark time. I was writing goodbye letters and letters to the grandchildren I would never meet and the weddings I would never attend.”
However, after a few months, it was revealed by doctors that she never had cancer in the first place. “I saw the nurse practitioner first and she just asked me about my symptoms and she was scrolling on the computer while she was talking to me,” Monk recalled.
“All of a sudden she just stops talking and has this look on her face. She turned to me and looked completely horrified and told me she needed to get the doctor and then ran out of the room. She left me alone for about 15 minutes and the doctor came back in. He said a lot of medical lingo to me and then told me I didn’t have cancer.”
“The doctor then told me that I never had cancer. [At that moment] I looked like I had cancer and I felt like I had cancer as I was vomiting, I was sick and my skin was silvery because of the chemotherapy,” Monk added. “The doctor then congratulated me, which really bothered me.”
The agony didn’t end there. Monk found out that the correct pathology report was a month old and came in before the second round of chemotherapy began. “I had had chemotherapy during this time and they could have told me a month earlier and I would have avoided the second round of chemotherapy if they had bothered to read their own pathology report,” Monk said.
“[After being told I didn’t have cancer] I had to wait a couple of days and then it was confirmed to me that it was not cancer after having a discussion with all the doctors. In the end they determined that my spleen was going to rupture which is why it had the mass on it. It was just blood vessel activity and no cancer in it.”
A year after the horrific ordeal, Monk is still paying hospital bills and is drained mentally, physically and emotionally. "I also still looked like I had cancer. I was bald and did not appear to be well. It was a daily reminder that it was something we had all lived through. A year on from what happened to me, I’m angry. They ruined my health and my insides are cooked."
“I grieve for my kids for having to even go through something like this in their lives where they thought they were going to lose their mum. I can’t take this away from them. I know on paper it only looks like a few months of my life but it felt like a lifetime," she added further.
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