05/08/2026
She walked into the ER with a blood pressure of 200 over 180 and cried in triage because her body was telling her something the chart wouldn't record. They wrote "anxiety" in her chart and sent her home.
About an hour before her real diagnosis, an ER team told her that anyone could see she was having a panic attack and the emergency room wasn't really the place for that.
She was a doctor. A pediatrician in her forties with three school-aged kids. She had been to the ER twice already with blood pressures in the 200s and chest scans they called negative. She knew her own body. She also knew the criteria for hypertensive emergency well enough to call her own utilization review team and ask them to send the criteria over so she could fight to be admitted.
That last visit, she insisted on seeing the physician instead of the extender. She insisted on a scan of her abdomen. They found a ten by twelve centimeter tumor. They went back and looked at the chest scan from the trip before. The "negative" one. There were findings on it. She was admitted to the ICU and told she had stage four renal cell carcinoma.
Her name is Kelly Curtin-Hallinan. The cancer was eventually downgraded to stage three. She is finishing treatment this month.
When she asked the team afterward if she could have advocated better for herself, she meant it. Because for weeks, she had started to wonder if she really was having a psychological event. That is what medical gaslighting does to a person, even a person with an MD.
If you have a wife or a sister or a mom or a friend who keeps coming back to the ER and keeps getting sent home with anxiety, listen to her. If you are a clinician on the other side of that triage door, listen to her too. Not every panic attack is a panic attack. Sometimes it is a tumor the size of a softball.
Send this to the woman in your life who has ever been told her pain was in her head. Send it to the resident who is learning what it means to listen. Send it to the doctor who needs to remember what it feels like on the other side of the gown.
Listen to the full conversation on The Podcast by KevinMD. Link in the comments.
What did you come in to say at your last appointment that you ended up leaving unsaid?
