CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A woman is filing a lawsuit after she spent months believing she had cancer, only to find out that the biopsy was not hers.
Cassandra Barksdale says she was misdiagnosed with endometrial uterine cancer in March 2025 at Kaiser Permanente Southwood Medical Center in Jonesboro.
In May of that year, she underwent a total hysterectomy. It wasn’t until September that she found her tissue sample belonged to another patient and she did not have cancer.
Channel 2’s Susan Hendricks was at a news conference on Tuesday as Barksdale and her attorneys announced a lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente.
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She says that the misdiagnosis took so much from her. During those seven months, her sons were figuring out how they would go forward without their mother. She says that even when they knew she didn’t have cancer, they were still concerned.
“They were happy about it, but they were still worried about me because it started messing with me mentally,” she said.
The Edmond Firm, who is representing Barksdale, is run by Rod Edmond, who was a practicing physician for more than 20 years before attending law school.
“Here we are we living in an era of hyper technology and we’ve got computer science, AI. How...did this happen?” he said.
The law firm says the misdiagnosis added stress, anxiety and worry, and also took away their client’s choice when it came to having more children.
“They were like, ‘Let’s not take her ovaries in case she wants to have in vitro.’ That is clearly printed in the medical records from the doctor, so that is something they discussed. They didn’t want to extinguish her possibility of having biological kids, and that was done,” Edmond said.
“Her choice was stripped away this is her choice and it breaks my heart that this could happen to someone,” attorney Shannon Young said.
Kaiser Permanente shared a statement with Channel 2 Action News, saying they took steps to make sure this does not happen again in the future.
“Our most important responsibility is to safely, expertly and compassionately care for the people who entrust us with their health. If we make a mistake, it can have profound effects.
Ms. Barksdale should not have experienced this. We have highly trained staff and very thorough processes in place to prevent errors like this from taking place. After this occurred last year, we took immediate steps to ensure it could not happen again.
We realize the impact of this incident, and are working with Ms. Barksdale and her counsel to resolve this in the most fair and accountable way we can."
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