UK girl, 12, underwent six grueling –and unnecessary — rounds of chemo after misdiagnosis
A 12-year-old girl in England was forced to endure six grueling rounds of chemotherapy that robbed her of several years of her childhood — only for the treatments to be deemed completely unnecessary due to a misdiagnosis.
Faye Condon, of Plymouth, was diagnosed with Juvenile Dermatomyositis (JDM), a rare autoimmune disease, by doctors at Bristol Children’s Hospital in 2019 after she struggled to walk “just 200 yards to school [and] would randomly fall,” her mother Christina Condon told LADBible.
While JDM is not cancer, it may be treated with low-dose chemotherapy drugs and corticosteroids to suppress the immune system and halt muscle damage.
As a result, little Faye was subjected to six cycles of chemo, home injections and a muscle biopsy over seven years, the Telegraph reported.
“We have spent her entire childhood in and out of hospital,” she told LADBible. “We haven’t been on holidays and we don’t have a house or car that is wheelchair accessible because we were told she was going to get better.”
But the concerned mom always doubted the diagnosis, claiming staff “just threw medicine” at her daughter.
“Every test for the autoimmune disease was negative,” Christina added. “Not a single test they did pointed towards JDM.”
In reality, Faye suffers from Emory-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD), despite staff at Bristol Children’s “categorically” telling her parents that “it was not muscular dystrophy.”
She was finally given the correct diagnosis once she was referred to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
“All it took to diagnose her was a blood test with specific genetic testing, but the doctors at BCH were so adamant that it was JDM they never sent for this test,” Christina said. “Those doctors ruined my little girl’s whole childhood. I feel so let down by everybody.”
