In a shocking case of misdiagnosis, a British woman who spent two years having nine cycles of treatment after being told she had skin cancer – and even having her eggs frozen after having immunotherapy – has been awarded compensation.
Megan Royle (33) endured painful and disfiguring surgery as well as treatment, which affected her fertility – after wrongly being diagnosed with cancer.
She has won compensation from the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the pathology service used by Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, as both misinterpreted her results, leading to the misdiagnosis in 2019.
The error was only discovered when she moved in 2021 and another trust reviewed her records.
“You just can’t really believe something like this can happen, and I’ve still not had an explanation as to how and why it happened,” she told The Independent.
“I spent two years believing I had cancer, went through all the treatment and then was told there had been no cancer at all.”
She was referred for a dermatology review at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital by her GP in 2019 when she reported a mole on her upper arm had increased in size, become itchy and scabbed.
A biopsy was carried out and reviewed, and Royle, then aged 29, was told melanoma had been identified.
She was referred to the specialist cancer unit at The Royal Marsden Hospital. Her biopsy was reviewed and, again, she was told that this confirmed a melanoma.
She underwent a 2cm wide excision of tissue to remove the “cancer”.
Immunotherapy treatment she received could have an impact on her fertility, she was told, and so she underwent egg preservation.
After she had nine treatment cycles up to May 2021, and after being told there was no longer any sign of the disease, she relocated – and after new hospital trust reviewed her file and scans, the error with her diagnosis was discovered.
She said: “When the doctors sat me down and told me, it took a while to sink in. You’d think the immediate emotion would be relief, and in some sense it was, but the greater emotions were frustration and anger.
“When I was first told I had cancer and that I needed surgery to remove it and treatment that could affect my fertility, my approach was simply to say ‘yes, let’s do what we need to do’.
“I wasn’t thinking about having children at that time, but it was always something I planned for later in life, so having eggs preserved was something I didn’t hesitate to do.
“However, being told two years later, having undergone the treatment and lived with the worry, that I’d never had cancer at all, was hard.”
She took her case to medical negligence lawyers who won an out of court settlement with the two trusts.
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