ORLANDO, Fla. – A woman has filed a lawsuit seeking her medical records from Florida Hospital after she says she was improperly diagnosed with rectal cancer because of "medical errors."
The woman, who identifies herself as "Jane Doe" in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday, claiming her routine colonoscopy test was switched with another patient's test, resulting in her diagnosis last December.
As a result, she says she underwent four unnecessary surgeries, three invasive colon exams and a re-sectioning of her rectum before she and her doctor discovered the error in May.
"The unnecessary surgeries pale in comparison both to the needless death sentence Jane Doe endured for over five-and-a-half months, during which she consoled with her children, family and fiance over her impending death and to the incontinent issues she now suffers, which resulted from the unnecessary rectum-removal surgery," the lawsuit reads.
The woman and her attorney are now using their lawsuit to gain access to her medical records and any communication about the mix-up internally.
They are also seeking hospital protocol for cancer testing both before her incident and after to see if they've changed the way specimens are handled so that there are no more mix-ups.
"It really cuts to the heart of trust between a doctor and a patient," said Local 6 Legal Analyst Luis Calderon, who said other patients could be affected by this discovery.
"It really calls into question what measures the hospital has taken to make sure the appropriate testing procedures are put into place, so the patient gets their test results and not someone else's," he said. "It really calls into question all of the hospital patients and all of the results."
Local 6 left several messages seeking answers to those questions, but Florida Hospital didn't return calls on Wednesday.
