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April 19 -- Diagnosed with cancer at 22, Jennifer Rufer underwent debilitating chemotherapy and a hysterectomy.

"I can't have kids," she says, "and I desperately want to have a family." Adding to her physical and emotional pain, doctors have discovered Rufer never had cancer at all.

Rufer is part of a class-action lawsuit against Abbot Laboratories, claiming that flawed results from their test led to unnecessary cancer treatments. [Separate from the class-action lawsuit?] she is suing her doctor, the hospital and its lab as well as Abbott Laboratories. (The hospital and Abbott are also suing each other.)

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Three years ago, soon after Rufer was married, she went to the doctor because of irregular bleeding. The doctor took a blood sample for a routine pregnancy test, one of the most common blood pregnancy tests in the country, called the Axsym BHCG. The test, used in millions of pregnancy tests every year, is made by Abbott Laboratories of North Chicago, one of the largest diagnostic and pharmaceutical companies in the world.

The test results came back positive, showing Rufer was pregnant. But her doctor could find no baby. Additional Axsym pregnancy tests came back positive for Rufer, but still, there was no baby. When a woman tests positive on a pregnancy test, it means she has elevated levels of a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG). But if there is no baby, the elevated HCG levels can be a sign of a rare form of cancer called choriocarcinoma. If untreated, it can spread rapidly and kill. If treated early with chemotherapy, it is highly curable. In fact, early treatment is so important that doctors sometimes order chemo even if there is no evidence of a tumor.

Rufer was referred to a cancer specialist at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle for more extensive tests. Though scans showed no sign of a tumor, her HCG level continued to be alarmingly high. Doctors diagnosed her with cancer [BASED SOLELY ON THE HCG LEVEL?), and she began chemotherapy immediately.