A doctor from Victoria diagnosed Herlinda Garcia with Stage IV terminal breast cancer in 2009. The mother of four did what any mother in her position would do: She started making plans. Garcia gave away her belongings, arranged for a hospice worker to take care of her and made a bucket list. Garcia also got treated for her cancer and underwent seven months of chemotherapy. She was placed on anxiety medications to help her deal with the stress. The only caveat: She did not have cancer.
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As luck (or misfortune, in this case) would have it, Garcia was cancer-free but her misdiagnosis was due to her doctor misreading the lab results. The doctor incorrectly read that she had enlarged lymph nodes in the PET/CT scan. Garcia wasn't skeptical of the diagnosis, as she underwent a surgery to remove a benign tumor from her left breast in 2009.
Garcia was awarded $367,500 in damages by a Victoria County jury in her malpractice lawsuit against the doctor, the now-deceased Ahmad I. Qadri. Since Qadri died in March of this year, the damages were awarded from his estate. That said, Garcia has stated that no monetary compensation "is ever going to cover what I went through. Before (the diagnosis), I was always dressing up, wearing jewelry. When something like that (mistake) happens, your self-esteem is not there. Now I'm working on getting it back."
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The misdiagnosis was discovered in 2011 when Garcia was admitted to Citizens Medical Center to treat her anxiety and doctors ran some precautionary tests since she was a cancer patient. A physician had a hunch she was incorrectly diagnosed, and the hunch was confirmed by testing at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center after an evaluation "confirmed that Ms. Garcia had been cancer free since the April 2009 mastectomy and that all of Dr. Qadri's treatment had been unnecessary."
"When I first heard the news at M.D. Anderson and was told that 'you don't have it,' I was happy because I was blessed ... because my faith is very strong," she said. "At the same time I was angry because all this damage had been done.
"I don't hate him (Qadri) but I feel that the patient trusts the doctor, and they need to take that extra effort to read things a little closer so a mistake like this isn't made."
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