But Maryland resident and special education teacher Montessa Lee has been through a particularly arduous ordeal. In September 2006, she experienced pain in her rib cage and sought medical care. Told she had inflammation, she was given medicine for her pain. But the pain returned. At her next visit, she was diagnosed with bronchitis and given an antibiotic. But by Thanksgiving, the pain returned. This time, she went to the ER and an X-ray revealed a 15-centimeter tumor in her lung.
How this cantaloupe-sized mass eluded previous doctors and why a chest X-ray was not ordered remains a mystery to Montessa. She was left to pick up the pieces of her shattered life when she was informed she had small cell
lung cancer and that the prognosis was dismal.
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