Tragic Scots teen's tumour found too late after year-long delay in diagnosis

Alana Finlayson died aged 15 after a year-long delay in diagnosing her with the same cancer which killed her dad. The teen endured excruciating pain as docs failed to recognise she had glioblastoma – a fast-growing, aggressive cancerous brain tumour.

She died in May 2019, just eight weeks after finally being diagnosed, by which time it was too late to save her. Before her death she begged her mum, Linda, to tell her story to prevent the tragedy happening to anyone else.

Linda said: “She was in their care for a year and they let her down. It ripped my heart out. We were dismissed time and time again. They left a wee lassie in excruciating pain and with no treatment.”

First, the pain was dismissed as growing pains, attention seeking and grief over her dad’s death. Medics even told her categorically she did not have the same illness as her dad. A short time later she began to complain about sore legs, which her GP dismissed as growing pains.

In February 2018, Alana’s school, Kings Park Secondary, called her mum to say she had pain in her hip. Linda took her to A&E but the X-rays didn’t show anything. Cancerous tumours do not show up on X-rays. On her second visit to hospital, the next day, a doctor suggested her jeans were too tight and asked her if she felt safe at home.

Repeated visits achieved nothing other than Alana being offered a grief counsellor. By March 2018, she was losing weight and couldn’t see properly. She had head pain, neck pain and severe nausea. She had gone from
a size 10 to a size six in a month.

Her optician sent her to hospital where she had a CT scan, an MRI scan and lumbar puncture, which revealed idiopathic intracranial hypertension – brain pressure without a detectable cause. It can, however, be caused by a brain tumour.

A shunt was put in her head to relieve the pressure but it would build up, causing extreme leg pain. The shunt was moved from one side of her head to another but pressure still built up. Brain scans showed lesions in her white and grey matter and a biopsy was inconclusive but wasn’t repeated.

Finally, in February 2019, her severe leg pain returned and docs decided to move the shunt from her head to her spine. They took an MRI and found she was riddled with cancer – a year after she first attended hospital.

She had a spinal tumour wrapped round her nerves and other tumours, including one in her hip bone – the original source of her pain a year earlier. She had tumours in her skull, the brain lesions were the same cancer her dad had but, even with her dad’s history, no oncologist was ever consulted.

The family have been in talks with lawyers.

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