Jake Tapper Shares Story of Daughter’s Appendicitis Being Misdiagnosed: ‘The Average Family Very Well May Have Lost Their Child’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper shared the story of his daughter’s appendicitis being misdiagnosed, an error that nearly had tragic consequences.

CNN This Morning aired a report about what Tapper’s 15-year-old daughter, Alice Tapper, went through.

“I was so tired, I would sleep through the whole day,” said Alice. “My stomach hurt so bad, I’ve never been in that amount of extreme pain before.”

“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Tapper’s wife, Jennifer Tapper. “The life was just leaving her. I just thought why is her skin so green and why are her hands and feet freezing?”

Jennifer added that she “100 percent…was starting to think” that her daughter might die.

“I started throwing up on a Saturday morning and I got really sick,” Alice recalled. “I was just not getting better so my parents took me to go into the hospital.”

She was diagnosed as likely having “stomach pains, possible food poisoning, gastroenteritis,” according to CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

The Tappers requested a sonogram, but were told by doctors it wasn’t necessary.

Alice said doctors ruled out appendicitis and instead diagnosed her as having a viral infection.

Tapper said that, being a journalist, he was able to get the phone number to call the hospital administrator. The hospital, he said, “took action, but most people wouldn’t have been able to do that. We recognized we have this privilege.”

Alice Tapper received a sonogram, which revealed appendicitis. Her appendix was already ruptured and her abdominal cavity had infected fluid, making it not possible to do an appendectomy at first.

“I had to get two laparoscopic drains at first. And then after they discharged me and sent me home, I went back to the hospital because I still wasn’t feeling better and they had to put another laparoscopic drain,” she said. “I ended up getting my appendix out 12 weeks later, in March.”

During the 12 weeks, she said, she lost a lot of weight, struggled to eat, and had trouble focusing at school, frequently calling her mom to pick her up early.

Following the report, Tapper and Gupta made an appearance.

Tapper reiterated his privilege in getting in contact with the hospital administrator to change who was caring for Alice.

“The average family would not have been able to do that and the average family may have very well lost that child,” he said. “And that’s why we’re coming forward, not to point fingers but to say to the medical community, please, at least 5 percent if not up to 15 percent of the time, appendicitis is being misdiagnosed, especially among kids and, as Sanjay pointed out, at least 50 percent of the time the abdominal pain is not just focused on the right quadrant, as Alice puts it. So the medical community needs to rethink how they rule out appendicitis.”

Tapper continued, “Please do not just say, no, this is viral, do not back into diagnoses — I’m sorry, I’m a little emotional watching that piece.”

“It’s okay,” said co-host Kaitlan Collins.

“The reason we’re coming forward is because we don’t want this to happen to anyone else and we recognize most parents would not have been able to get the hospital administrator on the phone,” said Tapper.

Watch above via CNN.

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