Hi all.
Well I had my phone consultation with haematology department yesterday (10/6). I was expecting a call from the consultant as I was waiting for the results of genetic tests for CALR, MPL and NGS panel. However I was contacted by an advanced clinical practitioner! He was able to tell me the results of the tests ( positive for CALR with 52 base pair deletion exon9 and NGS panel shows variant ASLX1) but when I asked what this means for me, all he could offer was that I would need to speak to my consultant about that and that he would send out an appointment with him for 3-4 weeks!! Given that I was told at my consultation in April that my next appointment would be in 2-3 weeks but actually was 6 weeks I estimated that my next appointment could end up being more like 8 weeks away!!
I was in total turmoil- as newly diagnosed PMF I am still trying to get my head around the condition and what the significance is of all these variables. I phoned my gp to ask for ana alternative referral to another hospital or for a second opinion but he managed to talk me down and offered to contact the haematologist to try and sort out the communication difficulties. I eventually got a call back from the haematologist who did manage to answer some of my questions (apparently I have favourable karyotype) and offered some information about future treatment although he still wants to stick to a wait and see approach or possibly start me on interferon. He said that as I didn’t have any constitutional symptoms he has down graded my risk score to low. I had to point out to him that the reason I had been referred to him was that splenomegaly had been found following a ct scan to try and get to the bottom of why I had lost more than 10% of my body weight in 6 months and that I had been having severe itching following showers for 4 years and that I am currently unable to work due to crushing fatigue on a daily basis!!! He decided to upgrade my risk rating back to intermediate 1.
Sorry for the rant but I’m just feeling very overwhelmed at the moment and my confidence in the care I’m getting has been knocked.
Can anyone of you wise people out there offer any advice on what I should do?