Daphne Faitala-Rodriguez grew up on the small island of Aunu’u and since she was just 10 years old, she remembers her mother, Meleke, always coughing. Having a cough that doesn’t go away could be a symptom of something as serious as cancer, but since it’s associated with the common cold or allergies, it’s often misdiagnosed.
It wasn’t until she became an adult that she grew concerned that this might not be just a simple cough and decided to bring her mother to the U.S. hoping that an American doctor could help her mother. When Daphne turned 18 she joined the Marine Corps and decided it was time to get her mother a second opinion.
Meleke came to the U.S. in 2007 and saw a specialist who unfortunately gave her the same diagnosis as back home, that she had allergies, so he sent her home with allergy medication. From 2007 to 2014 she continued to visit her doctor because her allergy medicine wasn’t working–because clearly, it wasn’t allergies. Every time she visited her doctor he gave her a different diagnosis: allergies, sinus infection, bronchitis…
“It wasn’t until 2014 that she said to the doctor, ‘I think I have cancer,'” explains Daphne Faitala-Rodriguez. The doctor told her mother that he didn’t think she had cancer and that any scans and tests would be completely unnecessary because, in his professional opinion, he didn’t think she had such a serious illness. Each scan was $10,000, so it was very expensive.
How did Meleke come up with the conclusion that she had cancer? “It was the same thing over and over and she wasn’t getting any better, and she knew that cancer didn’t have a cure and her brother had stomach cancer a year before. He complained about his stomach hurting and he was misdiagnosed for a long time,” explains Daphne. After insisting for about six months, her doctor finally sent her in for a scan and Meleke’s non-professional self-diagnosis was correct, she had stage 4 lung cancer.
“When they sent the scan results they saw that cancer had originated in her lungs, but the scan revealed that it had metastasized to her entire body, except her brain,” she explains. “It was shocking to us not only that her doctor thought it was unnecessary to get the scan done, but when the scan was done it revealed that cancer had spread everywhere and nobody had caught it.” The cancer had spread all over her body and the gigantic mass in her lungs was the size of a softball.
“I was angry and I remember thinking how is it that doctors who go to school for so many years…how do they not find it when it had spread to someone’s entire body,” explains Daphne. The doctor explained that she must’ve had cancer for years. “I was upset that the system didn’t work for my mom and that she had to be the one [to push] for the scan for 6 months, which was the worst thing because these 6 months could’ve made a difference since cancer spread so quickly.”
After the stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis, Daphne’s mother was given oral chemo in the form of a pill that cost roughly about $14,000 a month for 30 pills. Luckily, she had insurance from her husband, since he was a Vietnam war veteran and as his wife was covered by the Veteran’s Administration. The oral chemo stopped working after about a year and then she began radiation and a more aggressive form of chemotherapy and from then on, her mother’s health deteriorated.
“They told us that once cancer got to her brain there was nothing that they could do. The last four days of her life I watched how her life changed from minute to minute because in a matter of minutes she forgot who I was,” remembers Daphne. Her mother, unfortunately, died in February of 2016 at the age of 57.
After her mother had passed away, Daphne decided that she needed to do something because, before her mother’s diagnosis, she had never heard much about lung cancer. She joined a cancer walk and got involved with Lung Force and shared her story. She even went to Washington D.C. as an advocate for lung cancer prevention, urging senators and house of representatives to increase funding for lung cancer research.
Since then, she’s become more involved in helping raise awareness on lung cancer because she doesn’t want anyone what her mother went through. Before her mother’s diagnosis, she didn’t know that if you have lungs you could get lung cancer, anyone is at risk, and in fact, it is the number one cancer killer in the United States. “You can eat healthy your whole life, you can workout, you can think that not smoking is going to save you from lung cancer, but it won’t,” she says. “I knew nothing about lung cancer, I never knew that if someone has back pain or a chronic cough, they might have lung cancer.”
