My daughter complained about a painful lump near her groin, so I took her to urgent care.<\/p>\n
Because she had recently received a Pfizer shot, the APRN assumed it was just a swollen lymph node and told her it would disappear within a month.<\/p>\n
He didn’t even examine it.<\/p>\n
Over the next several days, the lump grew.<\/p>\n
And grew.<\/p>\n
Eventually, it was larger than a golf ball.<\/p>\n
The pain became unbearable.<\/p>\n
My daughter works as a cashier, and she started missing shifts because she could barely stand for more than a few minutes.<\/p>\n
She tried heating pads.<\/p>\n
She took ibuprofen.<\/p>\n
She kept telling herself it would eventually go away because that’s what she’d been told.<\/p>\n
Then today, she called me crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, it’s bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn’t ask any questions.<\/p>\n
I grabbed my keys and rushed her to the hospital.<\/p>\n
This time, someone actually examined it.<\/p>\n
And that’s when we learned the first diagnosis was wrong.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t a swollen lymph node.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t even located where the lymph nodes the APRN had been referring to were.<\/p>\n
I stood there listening to the doctor and felt a wave of anger wash over me.<\/p>\n
Not because I expected the first provider to know exactly what the lump was.<\/p>\n
Doctors aren’t detectives with perfect answers.<\/p>\n
But because he hadn’t even looked.<\/p>\n
My daughter had gone to urgent care because something hurt.<\/p>\n
Something was growing.<\/p>\n
Something was visibly abnormal.<\/p>\n
And instead of examining it, he had connected it to her recent vaccination and told her to wait.<\/p>\n
So she waited.<\/p>\n
While it grew larger.<\/p>\n
While the pain got worse.<\/p>\n
While she struggled to work.<\/p>\n
While she worried that maybe she was simply being impatient.<\/p>\n
And now it was bleeding.<\/p>\n
Sitting beside her in the hospital, I kept replaying that first appointment in my head.<\/p>\n
What if he’d taken thirty seconds?<\/p>\n
What if he’d examined the area?<\/p>\n
What if he’d asked exactly where the pain was?<\/p>\n
What if he’d simply listened when she said something didn’t feel right?<\/p>\n
We can’t change what happened.<\/p>\n
And we still don’t know exactly what the final diagnosis will mean for her.<\/p>\n
But we know one thing now.<\/p>\n
Her body had been telling her something was wrong.<\/p>\n
And she was right.<\/p>\n
My daughter looked at me from the hospital bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew it wasn’t normal,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
I took her hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you did.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sentence broke my heart.<\/p>\n
Because she had trusted the first answer.<\/p>\n
She had tried to be patient.<\/p>\n
She had tried to keep working.<\/p>\n
She had tried everything she could think of.<\/p>\n
She just hadn’t been given the one thing she needed most:<\/p>\n
A proper examination.<\/p>\n
I’m sharing this because I hope someone reads it before making the same mistake.<\/p>\n
If a symptom is getting worse instead of better, don’t be afraid to go back.<\/p>\n
If something is growing, changing, bleeding, or causing increasing pain, speak up.<\/p>\n
Ask questions.<\/p>\n
Ask to be examined.<\/p>\n
And if you feel like something isn’t right, get another opinion.<\/p>\n
You know your body better than anyone.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the truth isn’t complicated.<\/p>\n
Sometimes someone just needs to take the time to look.<\/p>\n
I wish someone had done that for my daughter the first day.<\/p>\n
Because we may never know how much suffering could have been prevented if they had.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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