Watch: Lovin Malta Journalist – ‘If I Wasn’t Misdiagnosed, I Would Still Have Two Ovaries’
Lovin Malta journalist Sasha Vella has opened out about her struggles dealing with a massive ovarian cyst, which doctors had repeatedly misdiagnosed for years.
In the latest episode of The She Word, Sasha said that she developed a bulge in her stomach in her teenage years and sought medical advice.
“I had gone to a doctor because I had a cold and told him to take a look at my stomach, because it had been growing for years and I didn’t know what was wrong with it. I felt like I was gaining weight but it wasn’t anywhere else in my body. He lightly touched my stomach, laughed and said it’s just gas and that I should just go home and sit on the toilet,” she said.
Other doctors diagnosed her with IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome) and prescribed her with anti-anxiety and anti-spasm pills but none of them ever recommended or carried out an ultrasound.
When Sasha was 19-years-old, she was hospitalised after experiencing great pain, but even then surgeons told her she only had a urinary tract infection.
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“I didn’t know if it was cancer or a bladder infection, and my mum said I was passing in and out of consciousness and constantly crying,” she recounted. “I took blood and urine tests and I remember a group of around seven female surgeons entering the room, circling my bed and telling me that I just have a UTI and can go home.”
“They left the room but one of them stayed behind and persisted in looking at me. She told me that something was clearly wrong and my stomach wasn’t normal. She could feel how hard she was and that there was no space left.”
A CT scan then revealed a 33cm ovarian cyst, so large that the images couldn’t even show its edges, and the ovary it had attached itself to had to be removed in an operation.
The ovarian cyst
Sasha said she wishes she knew the Mater Dei doctor’s name to thank her for taking her concerns seriously and ultimately saving her life. However, hours after the podcast’s release on Lovin Malta, the emergency room doctor who ordered the ultrasound has come forward.
However, her experience has led her to provide a recommendation for how to improve the healthcare system.
“The ultrasound recommendation should have come from a doctor earlier on, not from a 19-year-old. They shouldn’t have shot down the possibility.”
“This happens a lot in Malta – we sometimes skip the tests and suggest a possibility but don’t rule out everything.”
The She Word is a roundtable discussion show on women’s issues led by veteran interviewer Trudy Kerr, which is broadcast on Lovin Malta every Thursday.
Have you ever been misdiagnosed?
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