Cancer girl told: Use mindful app
DOCTORS failed to spot terminal cancer in a teenager, instead telling her to try a mindfulness app for her “indescribable agony”, her family said last night.
Olivia Maunder, 15, has Ewing sarcoma – a rare form of the disease affecting the bones and surrounding tissue – and now has just months to live.
Staff at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey missed the tumour in her pelvis when she had an MRI scan in March 2021.
Instead, doctors diagnosed her with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a little-known condition where the body over-reacts to injury.
Her family said that over the next three months she went to A&E several times – but was told by staff at one point to “calm down”.
Olivia added: “I was even told that I was mirroring my mum’s pain as she’d had back problems. I wasn’t being treated at all, I just existed in pain.”
Her mother, Carol Rolfe, 52, said: “She was screaming, but we were asked, ‘Have you tried a mindfulness app?’ and were told it was stress.
“They wanted her to be quiet and not disturb others.”
Olivia, of Bordon, Hampshire, initially felt “relieved” after the CRPS diagnosis – but then became frustrated when she was given no pain medication.
Her pain kept increasing, but a second MRI was arranged only after a worried Carol spoke to an expert on CRPS.
The tumour was then identified, but by then it was so large that surgery was impossible. Later, a serious incident report revealed significant care failings.
After chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Olivia went back to school in April 2022. But her condition has since deteriorated and she was recently told she has months left.
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust medical director Dr Timothy Ho said: ‘We are very sorry for the considerable distress caused by the delay in diagnosing Olivia’s cancer… We are committed to learning from our investigation.”