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Montreal woman dies at 32 after being told she was ‘too young for breast cancer’ (www.ctvnews.ca)

submitted 1 day ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/health@lemmy.world

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A Montreal woman who was told by health-care professionals that she was too young for breast cancer but later diagnosed with it, has died from the disease. Valerie Buchanan was 32 when she died at the end of February.

“I keep asking myself why anyone, but selfishly, why her?” Chris Scheepers, Buchanan’s husband told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview. “She was a beautiful person. She was extremely driven, talented and positive. What really breaks me is our son won’t know the truly remarkable woman she was.”

Throughout 2020, Buchanan sought answers for a lump in her chest but had said she was reassured by multiple health-care professionals in Ottawa and Montreal that it was a benign cyst without sending her for imaging to confirm.

After 13 months, Buchanan eventually went to a private clinic and was diagnosed with Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer – a biologically aggressive subtype of breast cancer. Just a few months later, she learned it was Stage 4.

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[–] erin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I can confirm this from first hand experience. The doctor's office I was seeing wouldn't answer my very basic questions, almost comically choosing to ignore or deflect me. I called my dad, he asked the same questions, and immediately got answered. I asked them why they wouldn't tell me that and they couldn't explain themselves. They gave me a halfhearted apology and I found a new doctor.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Similar story, my ex had health issues most of her life and her doctors kept missing what was going on, partially because they didn't believe her about some things. One doctor deciding to investigate instead of dismissing saved her life when he found out her birth control was killing her, though her gp at the time still wanted her to finish the course.

That same gp also didn't believe she was actually dislocating her limbs until she finally just did it in front of him and he changed his tune right away (though still didn't really help).

Later she had a new better gp as well as a good idea of what chronic issue she had, but he still resisted when she was pushing for a diagnosis. I just came along for one appointment and when he said something like "this isn't a clear sign that you have ", I asked what evidence was he considering that pointed at her not having it. He then admitted he didn't know much about the condition and would do some research. After doing some reading, he was quick to give her a referral to a clinic that specialized in the condition because apparently he needed to be asked about his reasoning from a man to even bother learning about the condition that matched her experience very well and that she was later diagnosed with a severe form of.

I think AIs will be great for diagnosis because they will be able to cut out the biases doctors have against ever suspecting a rare case or giving women any consideration deeper than "stress".