One woman's close call with cancer was brushed off as simply 'bad luck' by doctors, yet she believed it was something more and discovered a frightening fact when consulting ChatGPT for advice.
It can often be frustrating going to the doctors looking for advice or answers and not getting anywhere, and while it often can just be down to your situation being less than you expect, there are some cases when certain details go under the radar.
This has become even clearer following the widespread adoption of the internet, as people head online with knowledge of their symptoms in search of answers, yet the introduction of ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots offers another controversial route to go down.
Doctors have repeatedly advised people to not seek out medical advice from AI tools, with one recent experience with OpenAI's dedicated health feature producing some worrying incorrect results, yet that hasn't stopped some from doing own research.
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One of these people was a woman named Schayene Silva, who discovered in October 2024 that she had a mass on her left kidney which eventually developed into Stage 1, Grade 2 kidney cancer, as per LADbible.
She thankfully underwent successful surgery that removed the tumor leaving her completely cancer free, but she still was left with no concrete answer as to how it came about, especially after suffering symptoms for over two years prior to her diagnosis.
Everything appeared to begin shortly after moving home in February 2022, as she started to suffer from heartburn, coughing, vomiting, and even panic attacks — some of which she put down to her pregnancy.
Doctors told her this was 'just gas' or even 'bad luck', noting that she was 'too young' to be cancer — but recent groundbreaking studies have noted that age is increasingly not a factor when it comes to diagnosis.
She had her whole house tested for mold after noticing a pattern with the symptoms and her move, and decided to dismantle an ice machine that was already present in the house as part of the process.
The appliance itself was completely covered in mold spores from the inside, and following this discovery she was tested for Ochratoxin – a toxin produced by mold – which revealed that she had ten times the normal amount inside her body.
Experts have previously indicated that there's a strong link between Ochratoxin and kidney damage, and upon consultation with ChatGPT, Schayene was confident that this was the cause.
This prompted her to stop drinking from the ice machine completely, and her symptoms went away as if like magic. From that point onwards she had no more heartburn or panic attacks, and both her nails and hair started to grow back.