A 20-year-old man has been left wondering ‘”what if” after his cancer was originally misdiagnosed.
Kyle Hilton, a sales adviser for Sky, has rhabdomyoma sarcoma, which is a rare type of cancer but was initially told that it was nothing more than constipation.
He went to his GP who thought it could be a kidney issue, but when the pain didn’t subside Kyle went to the Royal Derby Hospital a week later.
“I kept getting pains in my lower back and I was being sick a lot, at night, then it got to the points where I could feel it all the time,” Kyle told Derbyshire Live.
“I went to A&E and they just turned me away, told me I could be constipated and gave me some laxatives.”
He returned a week later and after blood tests he was kept in overnight as doctors began to suspect cancer.
Over the next two weeks, he was told he had Burkitt lymphoma and began prepping him for chemotherapy which took another week.
“They said pretty much everyone got cured and that it was going to be fine. I said ‘you promise?’ The doctor said ‘yeah, you’re going to be fine’ with my dad in the room.”
Kyle claimed he felt as though he was back to square one almost two months after first approaching his GP.
Kyle said: “When he came in and told me it was something else it shocked me, it made me feel like no-one had a clue what was going on.
“I asked ‘Am I going to be okay?’ and he said ‘I don’t have the answer to that’ and that really threw me.
“It was a big shock. I told them as well if they were going to give me any news that I wanted my parents to be there. But they just came in and told me. My parents were at home. So I had to ring them and tell them, they fully went against my wishes.”
Kyle said medics were only 80% sure it was the specific type of cancer but they needed to start chemotherapy because it had been left for two months.
The cancer has spread from Kyle’s stomach to his neck.
“If it’d been caught earlier, maybe they could’ve done more,” says Kyle who has been left wondering what could have been after his difficult experience with the Royal Derby Hospital.
“I wouldn’t be going back there again if I thought there was something wrong with me, they weren’t very good at all. It just felt like they didn’t care and then for them to get it wrong, especially when they didn’t have all the tests back, they just told me without really knowing.
“I didn’t appreciate that at all, especially when it’s my health and it’s something so serious.”
Kyle has now undergone seven rounds of chemotherapy and has three more to go, plus another one or two years of maintenance chemotherapy.
He has lost over three stone and says that he has become “really weak, I have lost all feeling in my fingers because of the treatment so I can’t even do basic stuff anymore.”
Kyle has now set up a GoFundMe page as he looks for alternative treatments to accompany his chemotherapy and give him the best chance at survival.
The Royal Derby Hospital said it is reaching out to Kyle and his family to offer support.
Dr Magnus Harrison, Executive Medical Director at UHDB, has said: “Rhabdomyosarcoma and Burkitt Lymphoma are both rare conditions that are very similar and are sadly renowned for mimicking one another.
“Unfortunately, as with other cancers of this nature, a complex case such as this can represent a real challenge for clinicians to quickly identify the condition before reaching a final diagnosis.
“We know that this must be an extremely difficult time for Mr Hilton and his family, so we are in the process of contacting them to answer any concerns they might have and to offer them our support.”