A grandmother's family spent months fearing she would die after she was diagnosed with a cancerous tumour - but it turned out to be a bladder stone, they say.
Former nurse Isla Keating's husband and children were devastated when they were told she had bladder cancer in November last year.
They pushed for life-saving surgery to remove the "tumour", but they claim doctors told them the 62-year-old was too weak and "gave her no treatment".
After threatening legal action, a CT scan was ordered and it revealed that Mrs Keating wasn't dying of cancer, and a bladder stone had been misdiagnosed as a tumour, her son Martin told the Daily Record.
Mrs Keating, of Dunfermline, has multiple sclerosis which has caused a form of dementia that has left her unable to speak.
Her son Martin said: “My family has been under absolute agony, fighting to get treatment for my mum for a condition she didn’t even have.
“Mum has been robbed of six months at home with her family. My father has been robbed of six months with his wife. With a condition as serious as MS, this is a precious time.
“We have been put through utter hell, and are seeking legal advice so no other family ever has to go through this again.”
After Mrs Keating was diagnosed with bladder cancer in November last year, her husband Jim, 64, and her children pushed for surgery, but they claim doctors at Victoria Hospital, in Kirkcaldy, said she was too weak.
Martin also asked for a CT scan and a cystography, a procedure that uses X-rays to examine the bladder.
He said: “We were arguing all the time for the surgery. We knew it could have been done but with the anaesthetic there was an increased risk.
“But there is no choice when you are dealing with cancer.
“I was demanding the other scans but they refused. I asked in November, December, January, February, March and April.
“They gave her no treatment. They wanted to kick her to the kerb, they wanted her out of hospital. They pretty much wanted to leave her to die.
“But we refused to take her until the tests were done.”
Mrs Keating's GP made an urgent referral to NHS Lothian, but doctors agreed with the initial diagnosis.
Martin said: “I do not blame them. They made their assessment from the NHS Fife report which misrepresented my mother’s medical status.”
After he threatened to sue, NHS Fife agreed a bedside review by NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, which led to the discovery of the misdiagnosis, he said.
Martin added: “The first thing they did was tell NHS Fife to do a CT scan – for exactly the reasons I had been screaming for them to do since November.
"Three weeks later, I got an email saying NHS Glasgow had put in a request to NHS Fife for a cystography.
"Half of me wanted to laugh and half of me wanted to cry – basically we had wasted six months.
“The CT scan showed the mass seemed to have moved, and when the cystoscope was inserted into the bladder it made contact with the mass and it exploded. It was a ‘calcified mass of minerals’ – a bladder stone.
“If these tests had been done at the start of December, mum would have been home and wouldn’t have had a hospital-acquired infection on Christmas Eve.”
He said his mum was able to walk when she was admitted to hospital in October, but months later could not.
Her house was being modified so she could return home.
NHS Fife chief executive Paul Hawkins said: “NHS Fife is unable to discuss individual patients or their care. We do however constantly strive to provide the very best possible quality care to all patients.”
