Boy with cancer treated for TB for two years

LUCKNOW - An eight-year old boy in Uttar Pradesh was treated for tuberculosis for two years when he was actually suffering from cancer, a senior doctor at the Balrampur Hospital said.

Two years after Adarsh Kumar Tiwari was diagnosed with TB at a private hospital here, doctors at the government-run Balrampur Hospital discovered that he was actually suffering from Hodgson’s Lymphoma, a form of cancer.

“Wrong diagnosis forced Adarsh to quit studies,” G.K. Singh, senior paediatric physician at the Balrampur Hospital, told IANS.

“Adarsh was admitted here Feb 16, 2009 and soon, we realized that he had been under wrong treatment for two years,” Singh said.

“By the time he came to us, he had undergone all major tests and treatment for tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases that left him in a very poor state.”

“It was strange that the doctors attending to him could not diagnose the lymph nodes that could be easily located both on the patient’s neck and lower abdomen,” Singh said.

The cancer was detected at Stage III (B), rated as an advanced stage of the disease.

“Eventually, we put him on cancer therapy and he began to respond. Today, we can say with confidence that the boy is out of danger,” the doctor pointed out.

“We were lucky to have succeeded in our mission,” he said.

“We spent thousands of rupees in two years as we were busy running from one doctor to the other and one diagnostic centre to another. It was God’s grace that we finally reached the right doctor at Balrampur Hospital, where my child’s life has been saved,” said Adarsh’s mother Renu, who is now planning to send her son to school again.