Five Warning Signs

According to a recent CNN report, anyone who has been diagnosed with a serious illness should look for these five warning signs and perhaps think twice before taking their doctor's, or lab's, results at face value.

1. You don't get better with treatment. Many doctors don't like to admit that they were wrong. If this sounds like your doctor and the treatment she prescribed for your illness isn't working, it may be time to get a second, or third, opinion.
2. Your symptoms don't match your diagnosis. Simply put, your symptoms should match your diagnosis. If they don't, you may have been misdiagnosed. Before going back to your doctor, or starting over with a different doctor, search the internet to get a better handle on what might be the real problem. In addition to doing a generic Google search, there are many other sites that provide this type of information, such as:
   • www.webmd.com
   • http://yourdiagnosis.com
   • http://www.myelectronicmd.com/

   Although not meant to self diagnose, these sites can provide you with information to take to your doctor that might narrow down the possibilities of what ails you.

3. Your diagnosis is based purely on a lab test. Be very wary of lab tests – especially when you don't feel sick or exhibit the symptoms that accompany a diagnosed illness. Labs make mistakes and some doctors don't question lab results as much as they should. Work with your doctor to have the same tests analyzed by a different lab if you are in doubt.
4. Your doctor attributes common complaints to an uncommon ailment. Sometimes an ailment is not a sign of something larger. A headache may just be a headache and not a brain tumor.
5. Your diagnosis usually involves a test you never received. The report suggests that certain diagnoses have accompanying tests that can provide additional information. If you haven't had the accompanying test, go back to your doctor and ask why the test wasn't given. There is a wealth of information available on the internet that can help here.

Don't wait

If you've been the victim of a misdiagnosis and want to bring a lawsuit, it's important to contact an attorney as soon as possible as some medical malpractice claims may be subject to a statute of limitations. If you do file a lawsuit, it's important to know what damages are available to you. We asked Dan Hodes, a member of the Advocate Law Group, to define the damages that might be available to someone who has been misdiagnosed.

According to Hodes, an attorney with the Advocate Law Group Network, "[In California], non-economic damages are capped by law [at $250,000]. Economic damages become a little bit complicated. For instance, [in a breast cancer misdiagnosis case], if a woman's stage at diagnosis is such that she is more likely than not to recur and not survive, in California, one can recover the future loss of earnings and the future cost of medical care, even though that person, at this point, is cancer-free."

"In other words, the patient is diagnosed with advanced Stage III or Stage IV disease, and if it's our position that that patient should have been diagnosed at a Stage I or Stage II, our argument would be that we are entitled to recover now for all of the future damages that are more likely than not to occur. That would include future loss of earnings and future cost of care."

If you've been the victim of medical malpractice, contact a medical malpractice attorney to discuss your case.