Looking for advice on new diagnosis of brother in law - limited information

[ConcernedSisinLaw]

We just found out tonight my brother in law who lives in Trinidad has cancer, my husband took the call and can't really remember anything and I'm trying to piece together an understanding of the situation on limited info and without having to ask my brother in law to repeat.

They found a calcified lump in his lung on a scan I believe, tested for TB negative and last Monday he had a biopsy results today is Cancer. This is where it gets vague.... He needs to have another test tomorrow to define what type? Is this to do with staging or could it be that it's not lung cancer?

My husband said he also used a word to describe it but he couldn't remember what.

I'm trying to to panic and Google isn't helping so if anyone can shed any light on any of this.

I know we will know more as days progress but I've been lucky thus far in life not to have experienced cancer in my immediate family and I'm struggling at lack of information.

Thanks all

[Denzie]

Unfortunately, until you have a positive biopsy with a definite diagnosis there’s little you can do to prepare. It may be that the piece of tissue they got was necrotic cancer cells. That’s what happened with my mom’s lung cancer. Her cancer had grown a tiny bit, shed some cells then encapsulated itself.

You might start putting together a care package that contains stool softeners, laxatives, anti diarrhea meds, plastic eating utensils, and anti emetics. Please let us know what you learn.

[RoyCastleHelpline Partner Ask the Nurse Roy Castle]

Dear ConcernedSisinLaw

Welcome to the forum and sorry to hear about your brother-in-law, all be it a confusing picture at the moment for you all. Any diagnosis of a cancer can be quite a shock and it is not uncommon for us only to hear the first few bits of the conversation and miss the rest. It is understandable a worry for you and especially as he is in a different country.

The investigations that we do in the UK are chest x-ray, CT scan, PET scan which provides more detailed picture of the lung tissue, bronchoscopy and biopsy. It may be different in Trinidad how they do this, usually the first biopsy would confirm or exclude cancer and if it is cancer they may do an additional test for certain proteins or cell mutations which may direct more specifically what the best treatment choice would be.

There are two different types of cancer, small cell and non-small cell, we have an informative booklet named 'Managing your lung cancer diagnosis' , where this details what investigations are done, staging and types of lung cancer and treatment options. This is the link for this:

roycastle.org/app/uploads/2...

Try not to use google in looking up information, as you may read things that are inaccurate, we would advise that you stay with the evidence based approved sites like:

roycastle.org

cancerresearchuk.org

macmillan.org.uk

There is a lot of information on our website, from diagnosis, treatments available and living with lung cancer, all of these can be found on this link:

roycastle.org/help-and-supp...

There are many inspirational stories under our campaign section you may wish to look at: roycastle.org/campaigns/

If there is anything you would like to discuss you can either email us at [e-mail] or call our freephone nurse led helpline number on 0800 358 7200

Kind regards

The Roy Castle Support Team

[JanetteR57]

Can be a worrying time and Google is so outdated and inaccurate. Please use trusted data/information - Roy Castle lung cancer foundation, the UK's only dedicated lung cancer charity website is updated regularly by clinicians/patient review panel and its information is trusted by patients, public and healthcare professionals. Another good site is European lung foundation europeanlunginfo.org/lung-c...

there is a wealth of good information on both sites - another is British Lung Foundation.... but generic google results best avoided as so much has changed in recent years. good luck.