Today we got a phone call from my grandmother. My mum's cousin turned sixty recently and was sent for a full medical. The results came back a week before Christmas, and she went to her doctor to talk about them. Her usual doctor wasn't there, so she saw a trainee doctor, and she was told that she had cancer in her liver and it was terminal. She spent all of the Christmas season trying her best to keep her spirits up for the grandchildren, but she and her husband cried all the time when they were on their own.
My cousin (her daughter) works at the hospital and pulled a few strings and got her a CT scan, so that they could find out more about the cancer.
The results came back: there's nothing wrong with her.
Confused, she went back to her doctor and saw the one she usually sees. He couldn't understand why the trainee had told her that she had terminal cancer when there was absolutely nothing in the first set of results that indicated it.
My mum's cousin was very good about it, saying that everyone makes mistakes and she's a trainee. I don't think I could be that calm about it all. I'd be furious. But the good thing is, at least she isn't sick.