Multiple doctors failed to diagnose woman's pain — until her husband tried to ‘cop a feel’ and felt something strange
A small moment might give a person some really big and unexpected answers. A 34-year-old woman had been feeling really sick and her doctors couldn't find out why. However, she hadn't expected that she would get an answer when her husband tried to "cop a feel" one day. The woman, Elissa Kalver, had just given birth to her daughter, Ellie, back in July 2020, when she started feeling strange aches, pains and numbness. All her bloodwork had come back normal and there were no evident reasons for alarm. Until her husband felt something unusual, per TODAY.com.
The doctors couldn't give Elissa any answers about her pains for around a year. But then her husband felt a lump in her breast when she was getting dressed one day. "None of the pain was near my breasts. I was 34, so you don't do mammograms or anything particular anyway," the mom pointed out. Her husband, Eric, found the lump purely by accident. She went through a mammogram and biopsy after that and was diagnosed with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. "We found out that it had also spread all throughout my liver. My liver was covered with cancer and my lower spine. That's when I found out it was stage 4."
The woman had also been checked for autoimmune disorders before her diagnosis and everything had come back normal. One major marker of something wrong was the numbness she felt in her feet. "It was weird. I couldn't keep shoes on for too long. It was like my feet felt like they were swelling up and they would get tingly and numb." She added, "I was going to everyone, my primary care doctor, my gynecologist, just to make sure everything was good with my body because I felt like something was off. Again, everything came back fine." At first, Elissa felt that the lump might be a cyst or a clogged milk duct caused by breastfeeding. Nonetheless, she decided to check with her doctor.
"When they felt the lump in my breast, they also felt one in my armpit, which is my lymph nodes. From there, things moved faster." A PET Scan revealed that her cancer had spread quite a lot. Nonetheless, Elissa immediately got ready to face the situation and began asking questions about how they could proceed forward. She was prepared for chemotherapy and any other treatments that might come her way. However, the diagnosis was harder for her husband to process. "It was just very shocking. We all handle it so differently," the woman went on. The tumors had started shrinking, but around four months later, Elissa faced a recurrence. However, Elissa decided to make something out of her difficulties and started a gift registry for cancer patients.
"Rather than sulking, I decided that I had to do something and that's when I created the idea for the nonprofit called 'We Got This.'" The nonprofit allowed cancer patients to request things that made them more comfortable. Many people also reached out to the organization with things they wish they had known when they were diagnosed. "I don't necessarily believe everything happens for a reason because this is tough and I wish I didn't have cancer. But if I'm going to have it, what's come out of it is the most special thing I've ever done. It's given me such purpose."
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