Near the end of 2022, Lisa Monk, from College Station, Texas, went to the hospital with stomach pains, suspecting that she had a kidney stone. Doctors performed a CT scan, which showed that she had two kidney stones but also flagged a mass on her spleen. The spleen was surgically removed in January and sent to three different pathology labs before being tested at a fourth lab, where it tested positive for an aggressive form of blood vessel cancer. The 39-year-old was told about her terminal cancer diagnosis and given an “optimistic” 15 months to live. Lisa was then referred to a cancer hospital in March 2023 and began her first round of chemotherapy. After losing all her hair, she underwent another round of very aggressive chemotherapy, which left her with “silvery skin” and bouts of vomiting. In April 2023, during a routine hospital appointment, she was told that she had never actually had cancer and that the pathology report was wrong. Furious that doctors congratulated her rather than apologizing, Lisa says she has been left in debt and with her “insides cooked” by the unnecessary chemo. In the end, doctors determined that her spleen was about to rupture, which is why it had a mass on it. So now, despite being relieved by the good news, Lisa is struggling with the anger she feels, not only at all she and her family were put through, but that she is still financially responsible for the medical bills.
