Minister’s Comment on KTPH Misdiagnosis “Totally Unacceptable” Says Family Member of Affected Patient

To say KTPH’s misdiagnosis is “not necessarily a bad thing” is totally unacceptable and senseless. My grandma was enraged after hearing this uncompassionate statement made by someone of certain power.

A grave mistake has been made. Accept it, reflect on it, apologise for it, and provide the necessary reasonable compensation that the affected patients deserve. Instead of giving an excuse to soften the blow / trying to brainwash the public that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Also, what the minister Koh Poh Koon mentioned here about the side effects is not entirely true, my grandma experienced more severe side effects.

Here’s a summary of what my grandma had suffered throughout the cancer treatment:

Chemo (Paclitaxel) injection, made grandma so weak that she can’t even walk and eat properly, losing all her hair, vomiting, and having numbness and feet permanently.

Herceptin injection, caused heart problems that the doctor have to stop treatment a few times due to reduced heart function. She had to constantly do heart scans to see if she can continue with the treatment.

Radiation, made my grandma’s skin burned, scarred, and painful.

Oral medication, caused bones/cartilages to be weakened, which worsened her already painful arthritis.

Every injection is dreadful and caused my grandma’s veins to be swollen and painful. Sometimes, the nurses can’t find a “working” vein to induce the medication and had to re-insert the needle multiple times on different parts of my grandma’s hand/arm.

The initial incorrect report (done in Dec 2019) showed that my grandma’s cancer type is Her2 POSITIVE+. But in fact, after multiple re-tests (done around Nov 2020), the result is confirmed that my grandma’s cancer type is Her2 NEGATIVE-.

This means she only needed to do Radiation and take oral medication for her treatment whereas Her2 POSITIVE+ requires additional Chemotherapy and Herceptin treatments which is more invasive and has more severe side effects.

Our doctor also told us clearly that my grandma only has to take oral medication and do radiation for her treatment of Her2 Negative breast cancer. There’s actually no need for Chemo and Herceptin treatments which my grandma had undergone unnecessarily for a year.

Just making “a few more trips” to the hospital? NOPE. The patient has to take blood test one day before every chemo treatment and do heart scans frequently to check the side effects of Herceptin to the heart. These are additional trips on top of the actual unnecessary treatment trips.

Just because the side effects mentioned are “transient” or “temporary”, it doesn’t invalidate the fact that the patients have suffered unnecessarily.

<Frustrated reader: Pamela Seah>