Man terrified, but equally relieved after shadow in X-ray turns out to be button

By Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter





A middle-aged man lost all hope last month when a doctor from the Taitung City Health Station identified a 3cm-wide round-shaped shadow in his chest X-ray as a lung nodule, which can be an early sign of lung cancer, but experienced an equally overwhelming sense of relief when another hospital told him it was just a button on his shirt.

The man, surnamed Wu (吳), said he had a chest X-ray taken on X-ray touring bus at the health station earlier last month.

After Wu was informed that he had a pulmonary nodule, he took a long leave of absence from work to embark on a trip abroad to clear his head and started drawing up a will detailing how his assets were to be allocated to his three children after his passing, he said.

“I told myself to prepare for the worst-case scenario and just continue living my life,” Wu said.

It took Wu a while before he summoned up the courage to seek a second opinion at another hospital, which is where he found out all his fears were for nothing — he had a healthy pair of lungs.

“It turned out that the round shadow was one of the buttons on the polo shirt I was wearing on the day I got the X-ray. The radiologist forgot to tell me to change into an hospital gown or put on a buttonless shirt,” Wu said.

The health station apologized for the radiologist’s negligence and pledged to strengthen staff training to prevent such incidents from recurring.