Doctors miss diagnosing teen’s mumps

Young woman in contact with hundreds

An Auckland teenager fears she could have infected hundreds of people with mumps after three different doctors told her the huge lump on her neck was not because of the highly contagious virus.

Cailyn Selfe, 18, developed ulcers in her mouth the Monday before Christmas and noticed a large lump on her neck a few days later.

A friend had recently been diagnosed with mumps and she feared she had caught the virus so she went to an accident and emergency centre on Saturday.

She told them she had been in contact with someone with mumps but they diagnosed her with lymphadenitis, the enlargement of a lymph node usually because of infection, and told her it was not contagious.

So she went back to work at NorthWest Shopping Centre where she estimates she came into contact with about 500 people.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, Selfe’s mum took her to Waitakere Hospital because she was still in pain. They did a blood test and two different doctors both told her it was lymphadenitis — but still no one took a swab of her throat.

She was told it was not mumps because it was her submandibular glands that were swollen, not the parotid gland.

They told her to wait a week and then come back if it was still swollen.

The Massey woman went to church on Christmas Eve and had Christmas lunch with family, including overseas guests.

By that evening Selfe, who had had all her measles, mumps and rubella vaccines, was in so much pain her mum took her to another accident and emergency centre where the doctor took one look and told her it was mumps.

A swab of her throat was taken and three days later the results confirmed she had the virus.

Given the outbreak, which has seen 1046 Aucklanders contract mumps so far this year, Selfe and her mother were both left astounded no one took a swab of her throat earlier.

“I probably saw 1000 people because I thought I wasn’t contagious. I’m just sad that I didn’t know and I’ve probably infected them,” Selfe said. “I just feel really bad.” Her advice to anyone who suspected they might have the virus was to insist doctors to do a swab so mumps could at least be ruled out. Mother Adele Selfe agreed. “I wouldn’t think it was that hard [to diagnose] given there’s a mumps epidemic. Even if it’s not, I feel they should have done a check from the start.”

A Waitemata District Health Board spokesman said the staff at Waitakere Hospital made what they believed, at the time, to be a reasonable diagnosis.

“Given what we now know, the correct course would have been to diagnose mumps and recommend exclusion for five days. We are sorry this did not happen at the time,” he said.

“Given there are more than 1000 people in Auckland this year with confirmed mumps, swabbing is no longer considered a useful way of making a diagnosis.”