Her doctor said her tumor was harmless, common among Black women. It was cancer.
Tamron Little was 21 and pregnant with her first child. During a routine ultrasound, doctors found what they suspected to be a fibroid tumor.
Little’s tumor wasn’t tested or treated – doctors told her this type of tumor was common among Black women and would resolve on its own, but they were wrong.
Five months after giving birth, she was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer that affects the lining of the abdomen and, in most cases, develops following asbestos exposure.
Her misdiagnosis had delayed treatment, and just as she was starting her journey as a new mother, she was given 18 months to live.
Little, now 39 and a contributor for the Mesothelioma Center at Asbestos.com, survived. But her misdiagnosis led to a distrust of the medical system. Each year, a misdiagnosed disease kills or disables about 795,000 people in the United States, according to a 2023 study published by BMJ Quality & Safety. In a July 2024 survey of 50 cancer survivors across the United States who were misdiagnosed, 92% said the misdiagnosis hurt their health, 64% had their treatment delayed, and 56% said their cancer advanced to a later stage.
'Not in a million years' could it be cancer
When Little’s tumor was first discovered and misidentified as a fibroid, she shared the news with her family. Her mom told her it was fine; she had them, too. Her aunt, who also had fibroids, said, “It’s just something that you live with.”
Instead, Little attributed her symptoms to her first pregnancy, even when she became severely anemic.
“I still thought, ‘OK, pregnancy is brutal,’” she says.
Her anemia symptoms became so severe that Little dropped out of college and moved back home. After she had her son, her OB-GYN placed her on birth control in an attempt to shrink the suspected fibroid tumor.
A few months had passed, and a routine ultrasound showed that the tumor was getting larger. That was the first time cancer crossed Little’s mind.
"Right in that moment, I asked the doctor, 'I know you're saying that this is a fiber tumor. Could this be cancer?' " she says.
The doctor reassured her: "No, not in a million years," she recalls. "You're healthy, and for women of childbearing age, fibroids are very common."
But out of caution, the doctor decided to take the tumor out. Finally, she was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma.
“I looked at my family members, and their world just crushed,” she says. “That is when I became the eye of the storm.”
They called in the grief counselor. Little was given a prognosis of 18 months to live. She was in shock. All she wanted to do was hug her baby.
“I went in there thinking, ‘Oh, this is just a routine procedure to get a fibroid tumor out,’ and I came out with a cancer diagnosis of a cancer I've never heard of before,” she recalls.
Her doctor had no treatment plan. She searched for a second opinion and found, at the time, one of the few doctors on the East Coast who specialized in HIPEC (hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy), a two-step procedure that involves inserting high doses of chemotherapy directly into the abdomen.
Black women are more likely to die from multiple cancers, despite differing incidence rates
Black women have a higher risk of death than their White counterparts when it comes to certain cancers, such as breast cancer and cervical cancer, which have been studied at length.
In a 2022 study of 50 Black women who had experienced perceived discrimination in medical settings, 94% of participants felt like they were receiving poorer service during medical visits, and 92% believed they were not being listened to or “taken seriously.”
In 2025, an estimated 319,750 people will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States, and an estimated 42,680 people will die from the disease. While there has been an overall 44% decrease in breast cancer deaths since 1989, the mortality gap between Black and White women remains.
Compared to White women, Black women have a 4% lower incidence rate of breast cancer, but a 40% higher death rate, according to the American Cancer Society. And despite differences in incidence rates across the lifespan – Black women are more likely than White women to have breast cancer before the age of 45, but less likely between the ages of 60 to 84 – Black women are still more likely to die from breast cancer at every age.
Black women also have higher incidence and death rates of cervical cancer compared to White women; their five-year survival rate (56%) is 10% lower than the national average. Early diagnosis is crucial in treatment, but White women are twice as likely to be screened for cervical cancer as Black women.
A delayed diagnosis can further hinder the care a patient receives.
“It’s something that is very disheartening,” Little says of her misdiagnosis. “But it’s something that as a woman of color, I’ve experienced time after time.”
Misdiagnosis leads to decreased trust in the medical system
From the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to the forced sterilization of Black women throughout the 20th century, race-based medical malpractice has been well-documented in U.S. history. In a 2024 study, 58% of Black women surveyed believed the medical system was "designed to hold Black people back."
While Little survived, her trust in the medical system faltered. Eighteen years later, she’s still “very strategic” when it comes to choosing her doctors and sets high expectations for their standard of care.
“I’ve had doctors that, when I asked a question about my platelet counts, said, 'Black women are known to have lower platelet counts than White women,’” she says, referencing her anemia that was dismissed. “I’m not going to take that for an answer.”
Little's family relies on her now, too. When her grandma was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2023, Little was put on FaceTime with her doctors to ask the “right questions.”
“I can just imagine my other counterparts, women of color, who go through that every day, but may not know how to respond to it, or may think that that's normal,” she says. “You have a right as a patient to respectfully disagree with your doctor, and you have a right to lay those expectations down beforehand.”