A 39-year-old Texas woman underwent ‘intensive’ chemotherapy only to find out she never had cancer. Lisa Monk, a mother of two, initially went to a hospital in 2022 for stomach pain that she suspected was related to kidney stones. Her tests revealed two kidney stones, but also flagged a mass on her spleen.
Lisa then underwent successful surgery to remove the mass in January 2023. After that she was in for a shock. Monk claims that the spleen was sent to three different pathology labs to be tested before finally being sent to a fourth lab, where it tested positive for a rare and terminal form of cancer, called clear cell angiosarcoma.
Aggressive chemo
It was a blood vessel type of cancer found in the spleen. She did not tell her family that it was terminal and she had only 15 months to live. She had to follow an aggressive chemotherapy regimen. She was referred to a cancer hospital and had her first round of chemo in March 2023.
After losing all of her hair, Monk said she underwent a second round of therapy that left her vomiting and with silvery skin. It was a very dark time, she said.
Mistake uncovered
But at a routine appointment in April, Monk found that she never had cancer in the first place. The pathology report, her doctor explained, was wrong.
She first saw the nurse who after looking at the computer seemed horrified and called the doctor. The doctor told her she did not have cancer. He then congratulated her, which really bothered her. In a state of shock, she asked for a copy of the pathology report and called her husband to tell him the news.
Monk claimed that the hospital had the information prior to her second round of chemo, but simply had not read the report until her appointment.
She had to wait a couple of days to confirm this news. After discussion, the doctors told her that her 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, they said.
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