Jake Tapper’s daughter, Alice Tapper, has revealed that she “almost died” from appendicitis and how her medical condition was misdiagnosed.
The CNN journalist’s 15-year-old opened up about the misdiagnosis in an opinion piece for the network where she explained how her medical condition could have been caught much sooner. She also pinpointed when her symptoms first started and what they were.
“I almost died around Thanksgiving last year, and it was entirely preventable,” Alice wrote. “It started one weekend in November 2021 with stomach cramping, a low fever, chills and vomiting. Soon it became clear I needed to go to the emergency room. By the time I got there, I had low blood pressure, an elevated heart rate, intense abdominal pain and a high white blood cell count.”
She went on to explain that while she “was given IV fluids to combat [her] dehydration,” it didn’t work. She also said the doctors “didn’t know what was wrong” and that their confusion made it seem like they were waiting for her “to tell them what to do”.
The high school sophomore noted that as her pain got worse, she was transferred to another hospital where her parents urged the doctors to check her for appendicitis. However, that isn’t what happened.
“Since I was tender all over my abdomen — not just on my right side — the doctors ruled it out,” she added. “My parents kept pressing, so a doctor told me to stand up and jump. I could barely get an inch off the ground. The doctors concluded that what I had must be a viral infection and would eventually just go away.”
As noted by the Mayo Clinic, appendicitis is “an inflammation of the appendix, a finger-shaped pouch that projects from your colon on the lower right side of your abdomen”. Although it causes pain in the lower abdomen, for many people that pain “begins around the navel and then moves”.
In her opinion piece, Alice proceeded to share how her condition progressed. She said her “skin started turning a pale green” and that her mother, Jennifer Marie Brown, asked the doctors to give her daughter a sonogram to see what was going on inside her abdomen. They said it “wasn’t needed”.
“My dad asked why I couldn’t get antibiotics; the doctors said for a viral infection they could do more harm than good,” she wrote. “My parents kept pushing for a gastroenterologist who might have more insight about my condition to evaluate me, but one never came.”
She emphasised how “helpless” she felt at the time, writing: “My condition wasn’t the only thing that alarmed me; so did the lack of recognition I received from the hospital. I was not being heard; when I described to the doctors how much pain I was in, they responded with condescending looks.”
Alice then shared that her father got “the number for the hospital administrator and begged for a gastroenterologist.” When she finally got an abdominal X-ray, the imaging showed that she did not have a viral infection.
That same night, she said that she was “rushed” to get an ultrasound, which ultimately revealed her diagnosis.
“I had a perforated appendix that was leaking a poisonous stream of bacteria throughout my internal organs,” she wrote. “When I learned my diagnosis, I was almost relieved. At least the doctors now had a plan.”
She went on to describe that night as “a blur”, before recalling that she got a CT scan and emergency surgery.
“Two laparoscopic drains were inserted in my body to get rid of the toxic leakage. I had sepsis and we would later learn I was going into hypovolemic shock — which can cause organs to stop working,” she wrote. “That night was the scariest night of my life.”
Alice explained that she was in the hospital for another week after surgery, “bedridden with uncomfortable drains in [her] body and horribly sharp cramping pains”.
After this experience, Alice said that her mother did some research about how often appendicitis goes undiagnosed and discovered a study by Dr Prashat Mahajan, which was published in the JAMA Network Open.
Data from the study showed that during emergency department visits, “the diagnosis of appendicitis is missed in 3.8 per cent to 15.0 per cent of children and in 5.9 per cent to 23.5 per cent of adults”.
Alice concluded her essay by noting how important it is for her to “spread awareness about misdiagnoses of appendicitis.”
“The X-ray machine was down the hall, the CT machine just a floor below, the sonogram machine just steps away and the antibiotics I needed were just one phone call away,” she continued. “But doctors didn’t utilise these tools to quickly diagnose and treat me and, as a result, I almost die.”
She also emphasised how grateful she was for her father, as he ultimately advocated for her by making that phone call to the hopspital.
“It breaks my heart to think about the boys and girls who don’t have parents who can get the phone number of the hospital administrator — who can’t make their voices break through,” she wrote. “I still can’t believe this happened to me — and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”
