Angry - how did they get it so wrong

Hi Riddle

Sorry to hear about your husband, my wife has soft tissue sarcoma but we had all sorts of issues on her route to diagnosis and even more struggles with treatment.

For my wife she had some chemotherapy and it has managed to render her cancer stable - it has been that way for some time now.

Looking at Your feelings when someone has cancer might help to recognize these emotions, might also like to look at our guide on talking to children as that might be helpful. 

<<hugs>>

Steve

Hi Riddle!

I am still under the illusion that if they did adjuvant chemotherapy with my husband back in January, we would not now be looking at his cancer recurrance. Because they got it all- well now think they did and all margins etc they talk about were clear they said adjuvant chemotherapy was not necessary and when I asked not even as a precaution, the oncologist said no and that they don't do anything that is not necessary at the time. Maybe if they did, we wouldn't be where we are now.

Vicky 

I'm sorry to hear about your husband. I had a similar experience with my partner and his cancer returning. He was fobbed off for 3 months instead of being properly checked given his history and was told it was probably arthritis and Sent for physio. It was the physio who asked for an xray as he struggled with the exercises because of the knee pain. He was also told how unusual it would be for the cancer to return there. After the xray we were told there was a mass but they didn't know what it was, nobody did for a while! All we kept hearing was how unusual it was. He had a biopsy which revealed it was cancer. They thought it was isolated to the knee so surgery was discussed and agreed prior to the pet scan results being given so of course we had hope he'd have the surgery, recover and we'd move on. But the pet scan results showed various hot spots in his skeleton despite the ct showing elsewhere was clear.

It is scary, upsetting and natural to be angry. I feel like we were given false hope before they really knew what was going on. They should have waited for all the results first.

Ask lots of questions, try and get as many answers as you can. I wish you all the best on your journey. 

Sending strength 

I’m sorry to hear your husbands has come back. 

we are still early on in our journey, I’m hoping that they will be able to cure this

The uncertainty that it might be in his other knee and now his lungs too is awful and it terrifies me at just how aggressive this type of cancer is

Thank you Steve, I’ll take a look at the guides you recommended 

I'm afraid I have had a similar experience. My wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer over 4 years ago and had surgery and chemo and with further ongoing treatment the disease seemed to be under control. Earlier this year she started to experience abdominal pains and had a number of scans which all reported back as no significant change, don't worry about it.  Then she quite quickly was unable to eat or drink and was found to have serious kidney function failure requiring emergency nephrostomies and then stents. She was told that the earlier scans showed clearly that there were problems which the radiologist didn't report on.  If things had been caught earlier treatment could possibly have been started earlier and damage avoided.  Granted there is no certainty it would have helped but I have great difficulty in understanding how the radiologist could miss something that was apparently so clear.  

Oh my goodness,  so sorry to hear this.

My question is isnt that negligence? And what's being done about it? There's been many times when I've felt complaints could have been made. I know medics aren't god but how has one person seen something concerning on a scan that another, a radiologist who's trained to read them doesn't?

Sending strength to you both

We understand that there is an investigation underway.  As for a negligence complaint - quite possibly but we've got bigger things to deal with just at the moment.