Sandy Garvin is in constant pain and wears a pain patch on her chest.
She hobbles slowly with a cane after a hip replacement that also removed much of the muscle in her upper left leg. Her balance is too poor to sail, a hobby she misses bitterly.
Sandy was diagnosed with kidney cancer in the fall of 2006. Her surgeon, Dr. Sangtae Park, then on staff at the University of Washington Medical Center and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, told her that he had removed all the cancer when he removed her right kidney.
The short version of her story is that Sandy complained to Dr. Park about severe pain in her left hip shortly after her surgery and asked him repeatedly to do a scan to check for more cancer. According to Sandy, Dr. Park said it was "just a little arthritis" and he refused to order a scan.
Sandy called Dr. Park on a weekly basis to tell him that she was still in pain and wanted a scan, and he ignored her and her pain as she "progressed" to the point of needing a wheelchair to get around.
When Dr. Park finally ordered a scan in January of 2007, months after her surgery, he told her that the scan only showed arthritis.
Four or five months later, Sandy's physical therapist called Dr. Park to report that she was on crutches and could put no weight on her left leg. Only then did he do further scans that found the tumor that had broken her left femur and kept her in constant pain.
"He misdiagnosed it," Sandy says now.
@ Jeanne Sather 2008.
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