biopsy found cancer. surgery found something else…

Hello all,

first and foremost I hope you are all doing well, put on a smile and always remember there is light at the end of the tunnel and you are always in my prayers️

so my case is a confusing one and is about my mum it’s a very very long emotional roller coaster but what news we have received recently has all of us gobsmacked (even the Macmillan nurse has never heard of this)

After numerous appts and scans and blood markers since May 2021 -  they found a tumour in her liver she went for a biopsy, eveyrthing pointed to cancer. The results of this biopsy were that my mum had cancer as suspected. They urgently did a pet scan to check if they would be able to operate on her, from a pet scan they found that the regional lymph nodes were involved. The surgeon decided to operate on her and said he would try remove as much as the lymph nodes as possible. Mum had her surgery on 2nd November and had A LOT of complications. To the point doctors worried if she would even make it through the night. This was an extremely tough time for my family as my mum is a carer to my severely disabled brother who we had to look after. After a grueling 6 weeks where neither my sister or I could go see her (only one named visitor allowed which is my dad) she came back home last week Thursday. She had a follow up appointment this Monday and I decided to go as neither of my parents are 100% Fluent in english. I spoke to the consultant who’s been dealing with mum since July and he explained that the surgeon couldn’t resect all of the tumour in the liver and there was a little left which he ablated. He also extracted a lymph node (the most suspicious looking one he said) and both were sent to histology. Now mums biopsy found cancer but the consultant said the resection of the tumour and lymph node found NO cancerous cells. The consultant did say it could be that the part of the tumour that couldn’t be resected contained the cancerous cells, but they are confused  about this too. So he can’t rule out that my mum has cancer as there was some tissue from the tumour left over a bit (although this was ablated) he said they will constantly be monitoring her with scans etc just to double check and that they cannot give her chemotherapy as the histology reports of the resected tumour and lymph node came back as non cancerous. However if they had resected all the tumour and all of it came out as non cancerous he could have ruled out that my mum doesn’t have cancer.

Not sure what to feel about this news and I am worried there’s been a mistake as surely how could a biopsy come out as cancerous and then the same tumour comes out as not cancerous ? Eveyrthing pointed to cancer my mums blood markers were high the pet scans etc The consultant did say this happens in less than 5% of cases. And mum was thought to have a cholangicarcinoma. Has anyone else been through anything similar ? What do you take of this situation? Would you consider it something that is “good?” She is still not doing well at all

As a avid depression sufferer news like this does have me over thinking and making me think the pathologists consultants etc have just made a mistake with the samples.