Cancer is one of the most difficult diagnoses for a patient to hear. It’s far worse, however, when a patient gets a diagnosis too late to do much good — especially if the symptoms should have been noticed by doctors much sooner.
How do you know if your loved one’s cancer could have been detected earlier? There are many types of cancer symptoms that doctors are supposed to watch for, including:
- Unexplained weight loss over a short period of time
- Fatigue that is worsening or chronic
- Hoarseness or voice changes
- Pain, including chronic headaches
- Fevers, especially if they come on out of nowhere
- Skin changes, including a mole that grows or changes shape
- Indigestion
- Sores that won’t heal, including white spots in the mouth
- A nagging cough
- Trouble swallowing
- Unusual bleeding of any kind
- Lumps under the skin
While any one of these issues would be concerning, many doctors fail to take their patients’ early claims of fatigue or pain to heart. They chalk up unexplained weight loss to someone’s job stress without looking too deeply. They tell someone that a cough is nothing more than a little bit of asthma and easily treatable — or that a patient’s hoarseness is caused by allergies. It isn’t until treatments fail and the patients keep getting worse that doctors think to look a little deeper — and that’s often a mistake.
Quite often, cancer victims will tell their loved ones that they knew something was wrong, but they couldn’t get their doctor to take them seriously. If your loved one lost a battle to cancer after a delayed diagnosis, consider contacting our office to learn more about your options for a wrongful death claim.
