Dear editor,
In response to Friday’s letter to the editor from Yvonne Kafka:
Does anyone check their sources to see if a person is actually credible before publishing their slanders of a well-respected professional human being? Just for fun, we Googled the name Yvonne Kafka, and came up with this doozy …
“I am writing you from British Columbia, Canada on the Island of Vancouver. The women in B.C., Canada, have it worst. I was given a false negative three years in a row. Now I have full-blown cancer (May 7, 2008 was my last mammogram and ultrasound and it reported benign findings). The Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) is doing a review, but I have been fighting for an external review. I am not the only woman who has been misdiagnosed.
“VIHA is refusing to make a proper review. This genocide of women deserves an internal review. I want the world to know Canada is not giving proper medical care to their women.
“We are dying here in B.C., Canada. Right now cancer is an epidemic on the Island. There is vast cancer research going on in regards to VIHA, and some of us women are wondering if the reason we are not diagnosed on time is so that we fall into a later stage of cancer where experimental drugs can fall into place.”
Genocide … experimental drugs?! Give me a break! And you are printing everything she says!
I also work in the X-ray department and have known Dr. Z. for 10 years. Because of patient confidentiality, of course we are not allowed to discuss specific facts around patients’ medical history.
Let me just say that not everything is always correct when a patient is recollecting their personal history. I know this from experience.
Mammograms are very hard to read in certain cases and do not show the cancers 100 per cent of the time. Sure, if you find out later there is a cancer and where it is, you look back at the images again — you may be able to make something out.
But on initial screening, the majority of radiologists would not see it. It’s like those pictures with hidden things in them — once you know where to look, you can find it.
It just bothers me when someone like Yvonne Kafka is allowed to continually bully a man when he’s down.
S. Friesen,
Courtenay
Editor’s note: I personally edited Yvonne Kafka’s letter to the editor heavily before it appeared March 11 in the Comox Valley Record. I reduced it in length and removed some statements I felt were unsupported and highly inflammatory. Yet I published what I did on behalf of Yvonne Kafka and other women like her who are experiencing terrible uncertainty about their very survival due to concern that potentially fatal cancers have not been detected by hospital tests. The Record has published concerns from women and defences of radiologists by people who work with them and know them well. To the best of our ability, we will continue to present both sides of a story that potentially affects so many of our readers.