Photo: Bronte Doyne Facebook
The doctors did not take their fear seriously
... now the girl is dead. The doctors told her to stop googling her illness - and just sent her home.
Each of us has probably done it once before: Googled disease symptoms - and immediately afterwards regrets it. Because the Internet always manages to convince people with indiscriminate symptoms of having cancer or being pregnant. If one tells his doctor of the misgivings, one is dismissed eye rolling. That's what happened to Bronte Doyne. The difference is that her worries were justified: The girl died recently at the age of 19.
16 months before her death, a rare form of liver cancer is diagnosed at Bronte. The girl is operated on immediately, after the procedure the doctors give the all-clear: The cancer is removed, Bronte healed.
Posted by Bronte Doyne on Sunday, January 6, 2013
But the relief does not last long. After the 19-year-old is back home, she begins to inform about her illness. When she googles liver cancer, she comes across the quite respectable side of an American cancer research. The prognoses differ from those of their doctors: The liver cancer comes back frequently.
From now on, Bronte will pay special attention to her body. When she feels uncomfortable again, the girl turns with her concerns to her doctor. Her family doctor sends her to the hospital, but she is not taken seriously. With painkillers and the words, she should stop googling diseases, Bronte is sent home. Six weeks later she is dead.
Now her mother has published her daughter's thoughts from diary entries, text messages and Twitter posts. She wants to show people what she's been through and maybe save the lives of other patients. Because sometimes your own intuition is stronger than the judgment of the doctors. Bronte knew something was wrong, whether or not she was googling her disease:
"I can not tell you what it feels like to tell an oncologist that he is wrong. I had to, I'm tired of trusting them, " the 19-year-old writes shortly before her death.
my body does not feel very good #helpme
- Bronte Doyne (@BronteDoyne) July 29, 2012
In retrospect, it turns out that Bronte was right throughout the months. The changes in her body the girl had already seen months earlier turned out to be recurrent symptoms of recurring liver cancer. Today the doctors admit they made a mistake. They apologize for the bad communication. Had the doctors used to take the girl seriously, she might still be alive today.
