In April of 2015, Rachel was a healthy 38-year-old woman. She and her husband had two young children and she had just started a new job. When she started having severe back pain she went to urgent care for an x-ray that came back normal, but the pain became more and more debilitating. Her primary care physician wanted Rachel to get an MRI, but she knew that Rachel's insurance company wouldn't approve it unless she had gone to six sessions of physical therapy first.
Rachel did four sessions of physical therapy before she was completely bed ridden. The pain was excruciating to the point where she could no longer go to work and she was forced to leave her job. "I felt like no one was listening," she said. "I felt like I was screaming out how much pain I was in, but I had to keep going to physical therapy because no one was hearing me."
Finally, Rachel was approved to get an MRI, months after her pain began and when her physician would have wanted to give it to her. The scan revealed lesions in her breast and more than 40 places across her skeleton, as well as three fractures in her spine. Within days, Rachel was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, which was the original reason for her pain.
Once the MRI was complete, Rachel was fast-tracked for treatment. But if she'd been able to get the MRI sooner, she could have avoided weeks of pain and damage to her back. "Looking back, that was the most traumatic thing that had ever happened in my life," she said. "No one was taking me seriously."
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