Mariset and 8 women with cancer against the Torrecárdenas Hospital in Almería: “We died for its management”

—I’m Clara and I’m a cancer patient. Everything was easy and fast until I met the oncologist Antonia Martínez. Everything revolves around her, she moves everything.

—I’m Lidia, I’m 40 years old and I have HER2-negative hormonal breast cancer. In Torrecardenas I have felt a dehumanized service.

—I’m Blanca and I’m an oncology patient at Torrecárdenas. My frustration is due to the attention we receive from Antonia Martínez, who is a person who gives you the report as if reading the newspaper. I enter your consultation with doubts and come out worse.

The ones who actually speak are not called Mónica, Clara, Lidia or Blanca. They do not want to reveal their name for fear of reprisals, since they are currently undergoing treatment. The hospital in question is the Torrecárdenas University Hospital, in Almeriaforks public.

“Yo I was hospitalized about to die. I won’t set foot on the Torrecárdenas again, now I’ll go up to the clinical trial by Javier Cortés in Madrid“, says Mariset. She is the only one who dares to show her face because she no longer depends on Torrecárdenas. If she is still alive it is because she has been able to afford a private clinic. If she now speaks, it is because she has bought her freedom of expression. Almería converted into the United States.

Mariset, 33, has a HER2-positive hormonal metastatic breast cancer. The latter, that of HER2, is of vital importance: a positive in it opens many lines of treatment, it is the great hope of many cancer patients, as this newspaper has confirmed by consulting other doctors. However, in Torrecárdenas they did not test him to verify it.

[La lucha invisible contra el cáncer de mama masculino: “Me lo tuvo que diagnosticar el ginecólogo de mi mujer”]

“They didn’t do extension tests on me either. before starting the treatment to see if he had metastases”, he says. The result is that they gave him chemotherapy that was incompatible with the metastases, which caused liver failure because, effectively, I had metastases and I didn’t know it.

After 12 days admitted for liver failure and that the hospital alerted her that if her liver did not recover, she would die, Mariset decided to go to Madrid in search of a second opinion: “When they discharged me, they continued with that treatment. I could not understand it. At Anderson I had a biopsy and it came back positive for HER2. “Get off that treatment and put on the HER2”I was told”.

When she transferred the reports from Madrid to her doctor in Torrecárdenas, Antonia Martínez, she referred her to another oncologist and “he didn’t want to see me anymore”. “She told me that she did not like to treat a patient who is already being treated by another doctor, even though I had only gone to ask for a second opinion.”

After several more mistakes —such as, for example, a mistake with the pill that she had to take to prevent ovulation that, instead of that, was raising her hormonal markers—, Mariset decided to cut her losses with Torrecárdenas and Post your story on social media.

Denounce, an impossible

—I’m Vanessa and, due to a genetic mutation, cancer cells in my body grow faster. After turning Torrecárdenas upside down, they sent me a pair of pet tacs for May. I’m afraid it will reproduce fast.

-I’m Isabel. My partner has rectal cancer. It took almost a month to give us the results. The treatment appointment was for three weeks later. At that time she began to feel bad. We were in the emergency room, but they put a nolotil on him and sent him home. It is inhuman that they play with diseases as if it were a sausage casing.

These women who give their testimony to EL ESPAÑOL do not appear on their DNI as Vanesa and Isabel. They have been encouraged to speak to this newspaper, although under condition of anonymity, inspired by the courage of Mariset. However, they do not have the financial resources necessary to reverse their situation.

“I started looking to report, but it has a very high cost and I have to be going up to Madrid every two by three, could not bear such high costs. Yes, like many other women, I filed complaints with the hospital, but they are useless because everything remains the same,” continues Mariset.

In addition, this woman affirms that it was the lawyers themselves who dissuaded her from suing the Torrecárdenas University Hospital: “It is very difficult to win these types of cases because they protect themselves“, Explain.

Mariset is patient but not a victim. At most, if he is a victim of something, let it be cancer, but neither does he fight every inch of ground, of life. So he went on the offensive against both: he put himself in the hands of Dr. Javier Cortés, a world leader in breast cancer, and brought to light the practices of Torrecárdenas.

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“When I made the publication on Instagram, they called me from management. I clearly said that everything was fatal, that they did not treat us well. The director told me that it is true that Antonia lacks empathy. At the meeting they emphasized that I shouldn’t have gone to social networks, but I don’t regret it, it was the only way they paid attention to me and for them to realize it.”

“He has disrespected me”

I’m Noelia. The story is set nine years ago. My mother had early stage breast cancer. To reconstruct her breast, she was fitted with a prosthesis much smaller than her breast, but she was told nothing. Months later, a significant hole was evident in her chest. During the revisions they did not want to admit it. The damage has been increasing as a result of the displacement of the prosthesis and already last year, when going to the ER, they were shocked at the extent of the neglect.

—I am Patricia and I have breast cancer since 2016. I expressed my discomfort to Dr. Antonia Martínez, but she said that it was nothing. He had to ask for a loan to go to clinics in Madrid and Pamplona. There they corroborated what I suspected: that the treatment was not adequate, that it was scarce, that my cancer could have been prevented much earlier with extension tests.

It will not be difficult for you to guess: these women are not really called Noelia and Patricia either. The stories of all these women have particularities, but those involving breast cancer come together at one point: criticism of the oncologist Antonia Martínez.

Lidia tells that, at first, her struggle was due to the lack of extension studies: “that made me suffer a lot“. The feeling of being trapped in a dehumanized service leads to despair. “I ended up disrespecting Antoniabut she lacked it to me first”, Vanesa confesses.

Clara accuses the oncologist of ignorance: “Antonia told me that my genetic mutation did not need any kind of follow-up. LWhat was happening was that I didn’t know her, I had no idea. Later I asked her to change the oncologist and she told me that this would only happen if she wanted to. His solution was to prescribe me a pill for the nerves“.

Mónica affirms that she is “vetoed” and that Antonia acts with the impunity that the support of the hospital grants her. To protect her, she says, “they rely on obsolete protocols“, something that Mariset confirms:” If they really follow those protocols, which is very strange to me, and the extension tests are not done due to the type of tumor, those protocols have to change. They can’t do the extension study when you’re already eating metastases. In breast cancer, finding a loose cell at the right time is very important.”

“I underwent the extension tests four months after the operation.Why didn’t they do it before knowing it was cancer? When he did it, the news fell like a jug of cold water: he had a lot of metastases in the liver and lungs,” recalls Patricia.

It was at that moment that Patricia met Antonia and everything came to a standstill. Meanwhile, the cancer kept advancing, because that is its nature, that of cancer, which it expands until it triggers the panic.

“I had to ask for a loan to go to two different clinics: one in Pamplona and another in Madrid, the Ruber. Indeed, they confirmed that they were treating my cancer in a generic way, as if it did not have metastasis,” he explains. He gave that report to Torrecárdenas, but “it was not well received.” In addition, the Medical Directorate told him that Antonia Martínez had asked to “disown” Patricia.

Now this patient is not only facing cancer, but also uncertainty: “I no longer have money to go to other private clinics. If tomorrow there was a change in the disease, in Torrecárdenas they take a long time to react.”

“Being fully aware…”

EL ESPAÑOL has had access to some of the Claims filed with the Torrecárdenas Hospital by Mariset, as well as his answers. In one of them, Mariset complains, in addition to the “bad application of the treatments”, that Antonia refuses to see patients with whom he has made a mistake.

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Describes an event that occurred on the day October 14, 2022 in which the doctor does not receive her, claiming to be hoarse, something “which is uncertain because that same morning she was having an appointment next door.” Mariset considers this as “a violation of my fundamental rights and my freedom of expression“.

In response, the Torrecárdenas team communicates that they regret the situation, “being fully aware of the problem to which it refers“.

This newspaper has contacted the Torrecárdenas Hospital, asking it about the situation that many of its patients are warning about and asking for explanations, always guaranteeing the anonymity of the women who have requested it. The hospital version, which denies the main accusations and makes self-criticism regarding communication with his patients, is the following:

In no case have there been any delays in care or in the treatment prescribed by the hospital’s oncologists. The treatment given to the patient [Mariset] It responded to clinical criteria and has been adequate at all times according to the clinical situation.

The hospital also reviewed the information provided by the professionals to the patient throughout the process, because she pointed out that there was a lack of information. We spoke with her, and since we always believe that this feeling of lack of information can be improved on our part, we explained that we would analyze everything to proceed to improve the necessary aspects in the transmission of said information.

Meanwhile, Mariset, Clara, Isabel, Noelia, Patricia, Blanca, Lidia, Vanesa and Mónica, although there may be more, hope that public health will be strengthened and not weakened: their lives depend on it.

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