£76,000 for the mum needlessly given chemo for 18 months
After she was wrongly diagnosed with cancer...
A MOTHER underwent 18 months of gruelling chemotherapy before doctors realised she had been wrongly diagnosed with cancer.
In April 2017, Janice Johnston was told she had a rare form of blood cancer by doctors at Kent and Canterbury Hospital. But after intense treatment failed to improve her condition, further tests revealed her symptoms were actually linked to a different illness.
Mrs Johnston, 53, has been given a £76,000 settlement for the blunder, which caused her to spend nearly two years fearing she would ‘drop dead’ at any minute.
The mother- of-four’s weight plummeted to just seven stone as she underwent cancer treatment and suffered nausea, fatigue and dizziness.
After her condition failed to improve, a referral to Guy’s Hospital in London found that Mrs Johnston, from Whitstable, Kent, did not have cancer.
It later emerged she had a non-cancerous condition which caused her to produce too many red blood cells, the BBC reported.
A consultant brought in by lawyers acting for Mrs Johnston found staff at Kent and Canterbury Hospital should have carried out an ultrasound scan and bone marrow biopsy before reaching their diagnosis. The former auxiliary nurse said she was left fearing for her life after being told she was at high risk of suffering serious health complications.
She said: ‘The consultant said I was going to be on this chemotherapy for the rest of my life.
‘He said, “If you don’t take it, you’re at high risk of having a heart attack, a blood clot anywhere in your body or a stroke”. It was on my mind for 24 hours a day. Those are two years of my life that I’ll never get back.’
Mrs Johnston was forced to quit her job at the St John Ambulance nursing home in Whitstable after being told her chemotherapy made her vulnerable to infections.
She said the doses of chemotherapy were increased every time she reported that her condition had not improved. Other treatments included a fortnightly venesection, a procedure that removes blood from the body.
In November 2018, 19 months after her original diagnosis, Mrs Johnston was sent to speak to specialists at Guy’s Hospital after she requested other kinds of treatment. She said the consultant told her almost immediately she didn’t have cancer, with results of a bone marrow biopsy and ultrasound scan of her spleen confirming the news two months later.
Mrs Johnston said: ‘I’ve lost faith in doctors. I just don’t have trust in them. If at the start they gave me a bone marrow biopsy and a scan, then I wouldn’t be sitting here now and I’d still have a job.’
Mrs Johnston was the guest of honour at the Race for Life in Margate in 2018, but says she feels like ‘a fraud’ after standing on stage in front of thousands of women talking about a cancer she didn’t have. ‘You feel like people are looking at you and whispering, “she never had cancer – she’s made it up”.’
After receiving the news that she had needlessly endured 18 months of chemotherapy, Mrs Johnston pursued a medical negligence claim against the East Kent Hospitals Trust.
A spokesman for her solicitors, Girlings, said: ‘This is a case where straightforward investigations, which were not carried out, could have avoided the immense physical and emotional suffering that Janice went through and continues to go through.
‘Not only did she have to deal with the emotional anguish of thinking she had cancer, she had to give her husband and four children the devastating news.’
The case was settled out of court for £75,950 after the trust admitted liability.
An East Kent Hospitals spokesman told the BBC: ‘A misdiagnosis of this kind is exceptionally rare and we wholeheartedly apologise to Mrs Johnston for the omission in her care.’
‘Two years of my life that I’ll never get back’