Bereaved Sparkhill dad's cancer misdiagnosis hell
Dec 5 2009 by Alison Dayani, Birmingham Mail
A FATHER-OF-FIVE, still grieving over the death of his wife from cancer, has been left reeling after a Birmingham junior doctor wrongly diagnosed him with the same disease.
Roger Perks, aged 54, was told the devastating news at Selly Oak Hospital and given a discharge letter stating he had lung cancer.
The sound engineer, of Barrows Road, Sparkhill, whose wife Alice died from breast and lung cancer in May, then spent the next 13 days coping with the fallout from family and friends as he explained he had been diagnosed with the same fate.
But then Selly Oak doctors urgently called Mr Perks back to explain a biopsy showed there were no cancer cells and the shadow on his lungs, wrongly thought to be cancer on a scan, was “shrinking” and obviously not cancer after all.
Despite lodging an official complaint, University Hospital Birmingham Foundation Trust bosses, who run the hospital, have refused to apologise.
“My wife died on May 1 from cancer so to be diagnosed wrongly with the same disease was absolutely devastating for me and my children,” said Mr Perks.
“The junior doctor and nurse looked at a CT scan of my chest, took me into a side room and said: ‘We have checked with an expert and we are positive it’s lung cancer’. They then told me not to make any sudden decisions financially or otherwise.
“The biopsy result hadn’t even come back at that point. I have had no apology from the hospital even though I have it in black and white on the discharge letter that I have lung cancer.” Grandfather Mr Perks said he was sent into hospital by his GP for checks due to feeling chesty on September 3 and was initially treated with antibiotics for pneumonia when kept four days on the medical assessment unit.
He said: “I was overjoyed to find out I didn’t have cancer but that turned to anger for the 13 days my life was turned upside down. My 29-year-old daughter took it especially badly and the turmoil she went through was unimaginable.”
A spokeswoman for University Hospital Birmingham Foundation Trust declined to comment on the error.
