Updating my husband Alan,s situation from 2 shocks in6 days.
We received an appointment for his biopsy within 2 weeks and my husband went for his biopsy on Friday 28 th July.
After the biopsy,Alan asked the radiologist if he,d managed to get the fluid from the pleural effusion and the tumour and he said he didn't,t get the fluid from the effusion because it had dissipated but had taken biopsies from the tumour.Is this good news?
Anyway,all this happened on Friday and Alan had a phone call to say he has an appointment tomorrow at 10 30.
The doctor,s name isn't the same one that we saw last time.
How come this is so quick?Could the consultant be wrong about cancer?Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated
Ruth
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Ruth65
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From your post, you will be attending the appointment just now, sorry we were not able to respond to you yesterday. Please let us know how it goes. If you wish to discuss anything you can call us on our free nurse led helpline number on 0800 358 7200.
Thank you for your reply,well we had some great news today,we are now told that the biopsies of the tumour are benign and they think it is pleural plaques,which were caused when my husband was exposed to asbestos in his job over thirty years ago.The consultant said she was very sorry to have put us through all this worry,but the way it was presented on the ct scan and also with the pleural effusion they had all agreed it was cancer.
Now they are going to keep an eye on him and scan him again in three months.
I can,t tell you how we feel,we are so relieved.
Thank you to everyone on this site for valuable information,at least I could understand everything the consultant was talking about as I,ve learned so much from the people on here,good luck and god bless to you all.
That's great news, Ruth. Hope you've all celebrated after your really anxious time. One reason that timings change or even doctors are different is that they often work as part of a Multi disciplinary team so different doctors may have different roles/duties within that but they will all be working towards the same patient's treatment and outcome. We're so used to having all the information or answers and feeling in control in so many aspects of our lives that subjecting our health and future to people we've never met, don't know and who don't always explain the process or the timescales involved in obtaining results, leads to all sorts of frustration and anxiety on our part. If we were told why something was being done or how long it would take for the results, we could take it in our stride (we'd still be anxious but less so) - the greatest stressors are those outside our control. Yet ironically because they are out of our control, we need to learn to cope with that and trust a process we may be totally oblivious of. You asked if it was good news about the biopsy - they can use different matter to determine the problem - pleuritic fluid, sputum, blood, lung brushings/washings or tissue biopsy. There is a lot of work going on at the moment around liquid biopsies as tumours release circulating tissue into the blood stream so if this can be successfully developed, it might reduce the need for invasive bronchoscopy or needle biopsies that can be very unpleasant for patients. Still that's academic for you now so as others have said, go on and enjoy life! best wishes x
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