Not happy with cancer

The heading pretty much says it all, but there is bigger story behind it being said today.

A few weeks ago my mum told me that she had found a lump in her neck, gone to the GP’s and had a needle biopsy done. I was told on a Sunday and the biopsy was done on the Friday. We anxiously awaited news from the GP about the results but she decided to ring them instead. She was told if it was important that the GP would ring her, however she looked up the results and said it looks like mum should see the GP on the Friday (4 days after the phone call – not immediately). Friday comes along and the GP gives mum the results. A little ambiguous at first “a B-cell lymphoproliferative disorder” with ” suspicious lymphoma” and she should see a haematologist. He would arrange the referral and the specialists office would get in contact with her.

After one and a half weeks of getting the GP to send the referral, the specialist’s receptionists letting us know whether they even received the referral and being told that as a new patient she will have to wait 4-6 weeks, mum decided that long a wait was unacceptable and wanted to get into to see my specialist. 1 phone call later, she was in to see him the next day (Thursday 29th July).

My specialist doesn’t pull any punches and just gets on with his job of working out what is wrong and how to fix it. Mum was informed that from the results of the original biopsy she has a form of non-hodgkins lymphoma but he isn’t sure which one yet and more tests need to be done. Mum had surgery last Friday to have the lymph node removed and for the node to have a further biopsy. She is due to have a PET scan tomorrow and a bone marrow test on Thursday.

We are all feeling quite confident that it is a slow acting cancer and that is has been caught early. She has had good blood test results so far and hasn’t had any of the other cancer symptoms. It is even quite probable she will avoid chemo!

I will keep everyone posted on how she is going.