Jeff Henigson, 15, after undergoing surgery after being hit by a truck. There he began his ordeal. photo Jeff Henigson,
Jeff Henigson he was 15 when life seemed to bring a mountain down on him. After having an accident while riding a bicycle and being hit by a truck, he ended up being operated on in a hospital in California, United States, and with a grim and overwhelming diagnosis: an aggressive brain cancer called “anaplastic astrocytoma“, whose life expectancy did not exceed three years.
But today Jeff is no longer that teenager who had to struggle and suffer in front of three diagnoses: it is that after that operation the tumor tissues were examined: two pathologists had certified that it was a “pilocytic astrocytoma (spongioblastoma)” , a benign tumorBut a third party cast a completely different image that practically sentenced him to death. Thirty-five years laterJeff Henigson lives to tell the story.
Someone was wrong. And an email and phone conversation with a neuropathologist confirmed this. This is how Jeff said it in a note with The Washington Post.
Jeff remembers that last year the BBC news She posted her wrestling story as a teenager, at which point her email was filled with messages of congratulations and admiration for everything she passed. But there was a mail that did not convey the optimism of others.
Jeff Henigson is 50, lives in Seattle and has written a book that tells his story. Photo by Jeff Henigson.com
It was from a neuropathologist, karl schwarzwhose work has focused in part on anaplastic astrocytomas, the cancerous tissue they said they found in the brain when I was a teenager. She told her that in her 38-year career he had only come across three patients who had “survived well beyond the grim life expectancy of the diagnosis; after investigating, two of them were diagnosed wrong, ”according to Washington to send.
“He closed his e-mail, the language of which seemed a bit strange to me, with an invitation to chat on the phone. I replied that I would contact me soon. That week, before calling Schwarz, I had a seizure. Mine they are classified as partial seizures, which means that for a few seconds I lose the ability to form words or understand speech. My ability to create new memories is also temporarily interrupted, making it a bad time to try to have a meaningful conversation. the call, “Jeff recalls.
He continues with his story: “We spoke the following week. With an Eastern European accent, he said, ‘After the delay, I didn’t expect this call to come.’ It is unusual for you to have survived anaplastic astrocytoma.”
“This is what they told me.” He had seen dozens of neurologists over the years in some of the best medical institutions on both coasts of the United States. They had all basically said the same thing. The average life expectancy of a brain tumor like mine was two or three years. “
“I’m about to tell a story”
“Look, I’ll tell you a story,” said this doctor who was born in western Romania shortly after World War II to a German-Hungarian family, immigrated to Israel when he was 12, and then started medical school. him continuing his studies and career in the United States. Now he is a retired neuropathologist based in New Jersey.
He went on to recount an experience that led him to contact Jeff, who he recalls: “He told me about a case resolved before the trial where he was hired as an expert on behalf of a plaintiff, claiming that doctors had misdiagnosed a his brother. The man, a computer science professor in Boston, had a seizure which led to the discovery of a tumor. The tissue was studied. A diagnosis of cancer was made. He was told he would not survive. a year and a half, despite the intense radiation he had chosen to undergo. The treatment permanently damaged his brain, but four years later he was alive, leading to a revision of the original diagnosis. “I share this story because your survival from anaplastic astrocytoma is so unusual, so rare, that the diagnosis itself ask to be reviewed“.
Jeff Henigson’s head filled with questions. The doctor he was talking to asked him a thousand questions, but one in particular: “Was I misdiagnosed?” It was the same suspicion that neuropathologist Karl Schwarz had, with whom he agreed to share the medical history Jeff had kept at the time.
Jeff remembers calling Schwarz back and reading him the first report. “Your initial diagnosis, pilocytic astrocytoma, is a benign tumor. Why did you have radiotherapy and chemotherapy?” Asked the doctor.
“Wait,” I told him. “There is more”. I read the second report, dated August 10th. “It’s the same thing,” Schwarz said. “A benign tumor. The doctor simply added a categorization for the type of tumor. It’s still nothing cancerous. “
“There is a third relationship,” I said in a broken voice. I read it to him. When I was done, she let out a long sigh. “This is the completely false diagnosis. It didn’t take place in his local hospital. Someone wanted a second opinion from a respected institution. The results were sent to that person. But in any case I was wrong. “
Jeff was speechless on the phone and could only cry. Schwarz felt he was in pain. “Your story is important,” she told her.
The false diagnosis
“One of the two results is profoundly significant. If you have survived anaplastic astrocytoma, then you are the result of a miracle of biblical proportions. If a misdiagnosis was made, which I think is what happened, then yours is an important warning. Pathologists, like everyone else, make mistakes. “
Jeff felt something needed to be done and accepted the offer to provide a formal written review of the disease reports, hoping to get a clearer picture of what happened, how a mistake could have been made. It’s just that the first two reports, those from local hospital pathologists, provided solid evidence that the tumor was benign. The external opinion issued in the third report was an absolute return to the past and offered no evidence. “I can’t explain it,” Schwarz wrote. “It’s completely incongruous with everything that has happened before.”
Jeff goes on to recall in the Washington Post article: “I investigated whether I had grounds for taking legal action against the hospitals where I received treatment, including the one that hit my brain with radiation without conducting their own assessment if my cancer was cancerous But the deadline for a medical malpractice lawsuit in California came over three decades ago, and the sheets of tissue that contain the definitive answer to the misdiagnosis of my diagnosis probably no longer exist. Of the three pathologists who examined my tumor and made their diagnoses, two agreed that my tumor was benign and one disagreed that it was an aggressive form of cancer; they are no longer in practice. “
“Schwarz is of the opinion that the diagnosis of cancer was incorrect. I believe him. The best evidence to support his argument is the fact that I am alive. People with anaplastic astrocytoma do not survive very long, certainly not 35 years. Not. I’m a medical miracle. In a way, I’m more of a mistake.
“Cancer was never part of your story,” Schwarz told me, but that’s where he’s wrong. Cancer was pivotal in my story. While I’m sure Schwarz intended to comfort me, his words instead opened the doors to deep and painful emotions: fierce feelings of anger followed by floods of pain. “
He said he wrote a list of the consequences of a misdiagnosis. The radiation The brain damage has damaged his vision, hearing and hormones, and its long-term effect on the scar tissue in his brain is likely the reason he is epileptic. The chemotherapy damaged his lung function.
“The near certainty of my untimely death filled me with fear, not just until I beat the odds, but every time I got a headache, every time they put me in a tube for another MRI. precautionary, expecting to hear that I’m okay. ” for a year or two. My diagnosis has devastated every member of my nuclear family, damaging them, injuring them, for many years. There was so much to get angry about. So much to be sorry about, “he says.
“In the last few days, a third emotion has appeared. Slowly, deliberately, it makes its way into the emotional whole that dominates me. For 35 years I have feared that my tumor would return, that the cancer would kill me. It is leaking now, for the first time. , that cancer probably never was “. And he says that there he finds a modicum of relief.
Source: Clarin
