On October 4th Lorena went to the ER for the 1st of three visits within a week. She had a multitude of symptoms yet wasn’t admitted to the hospital until the 3rd ER visit. She spent time at Placentia Linda hospital where she was tentatively diagnosed with a relapse of the mantle cell lymphoma cancer she had in 2018, which recovered from after chemo and a bone marrow transplant. She was eventually transferred to UCI medical center to be admitted to the oncology department as it was believed she had cancer once again.

After a multitude of tests and another week of her being in the hospital, this week we were told by the UCI staff that she in fact didn’t have cancer but did have a severe bacterial infection in which she was given incredibly high doses of antibiotics for. Even with this new information, the medical staff was not able to give us an official diagnosis and one nurse told me “this happens all the time” and I just stood there in disbelief of the current state of the U.S. Medical system. It took some digging for me to actually get a possible diagnosis from the physician who then ‘assumed’ it was the bacteria infection.

First off we are so grateful she doesn’t actually have cancer, yay! Though she does have an oncology appointment soon to rule it out 100% by an actual oncologist that can diagnose cancer.

We are very disappointed and frustrated about how her situation was handled. Instead of focusing in on the infection, hospital staff led us to believe she had a cancer relapse without the proper testing done to have an official diagnosis. As you can imagine, this is heart wrenching news & due to her symptoms, we feared the worst and that the cancer had reached her brain. It’s been quite the emotional roller coaster!

Early on, the infection had been mentioned once and ignored as the possibility of it being the actual issue. I was not in California yet when the infection was mentioned or I would’ve pursued it and asked many questions. My mom went through an extremely difficult process while being hospitalized due to the confusion and delirium she experienced as a result of the bacteria and high doses of antibiotics. We are upset to know this could have possibly taken care of much sooner if she’d had proper medical care at the beginning, without her being hospitalized for weeks under the guise she had cancer. She had been in the hospital for over 2 weeks by the time all test results were done, it was an anxious waiting game with staff who didn’t seem to really care.

Without an official diagnosis, we are still assuming it was the infection but at this point, I feel there’s more logic in this answer than any answers we were given by the medical staff. Given the severity of the situation, I do feel medical malpractice and a huge lack of care was involved. I plan on investigating further into how this developed unnecessarily.

Thankfully as of now, she will not need to undergo any cancer treatment and is now at home resting and recovering from what she said has been the worst situation of her life. We are not yet sure when she will be fully back to normal, therefore donations received are sill helping her recover from the financial loss of not working for over a month and mounting hospital bills. She’s got a ways to go but I know with the support of her friends and family, she will get through this soon.

Thank you so much for you donations, love and prayers! We are incredibly grateful for anything you can contribute to help her keep afloat at this time. We would also be so grateful if you can share this with your networks and communities, especially if you know Lorena and know people who know her too. I will be posting any updates here as they happen.

With gratitude and love,

Crystal & The Garcia Family