By Anna Sargent of RNZ A woman whose partner was wrongly diagnosed with terminal brain cancer 15 years ago says she’s horrified - but not surprised - to learn another Christchurch woman has had a similar experience. The woman, who RNZ agreed not to name, said her late partner Jacky Sinclair-Phillips bought a coffin and told her kids she was going to die before the error was revealed. The woman is speaking out after hearing the story of Toni Shields , who started planning her funeral after being told it was likely she had pancreatic cancer, only to learn a week later, that it was a mistake.
Shields was devastated when she was told on May 22 she that she likely had terminal cancer following a CT scan, and had to go through the heartbreaking process of telling her children she believed she was going to die. “That broke my heart and it broke their hearts. It’s just all the ‘what ifs’ that I’m quite angry about - what if I’d taken my own life? There’s so many things that went through my head in that week,” she said.
It was a week before Shields was told that someone else’s images had been uploaded to her file and she was not terminally ill. “I was happy and angry ..
. I asked ‘what about the patient whose results they were for? Did they get mine? Have they been thinking they’re okay for a week?’ I’m just flabbergasted as to how it happened, and why,” she said. Another Christchurch woman revealed that she had a similar experience with her late partner.
