What is the typical wait between the staging tests and start of treatment?

Hello - your post has really struck a chord with me in terms of the challenges of being treated across different hospitals - for me it was one for surgery, one for oncology, one for PET and laparoscopy etc - so the communication between one and the other - particularly surgeons and gastroenterologist/oncologist was slower in my view. i also had the same as you with surgeon doing laparoscopy ( which was a different surgeon and hospital to my GI) saying it was urgent and i needed to start chemo asap for it to be operable as i was T4 but him not handing that over to my GI team when he said he would and then i had to chase myself. The chemo did end up then coming through relatively quickly and once some treatment starts you at least feel something is happening. Yours does sound like a longer wait than mine though, but that might be ok. chemo then gastrectomy and then chemo again  is the typical curative treatment for everyone with stomach cancer no matter the stage- unless it’s not viewed as operable. my advice would be to try and go straight to source to speed things up or get more info - so the GI nurses at surgery hospital and chemo hospital and the secretaries of your oncologist and surgeon and just be like a stuck record rather than waiting for them to communicate with eachother - i have found that the nurses in particular who are supposed to co-ordinate are often so busy and burnt out. It sounds like regular and timely communication is a problem. Have they told you the stage of the cancer?

They think stage 2-3 but not sure until after surgery. I feel like ive been lucky as im a Bexley wing in Leeds and they seem to be joined up and it runs quite smooth. My only delay was low white blood count which held up 2nd chemo but now im on injections that’s been fixed.  

yes yours sounds like it all happened very quickly and efficiently which is so good. my reponse was more to the original post but i’m a tech dinosaur

Yes, it’s stage 3, N0M0 for now, but who knows how long it stays this way. 
exactly as you say, took two days on the phone to get the hospitals talking to each other and processing the referral. 

yes - with hindsight i wish i’d been able to have all my care under one hospital - or at least made sure i had an oncologist who was proactive - i have found the hospital where i had my surgery to be much more proactive partly i’m sure because they are better resourced. Is this an option for you? wishing you and your husband all the best. the waiting to get started is really hard. 

Saw the oncologist today, he hopes to start the chemo on the 26th. (Because they need to make a new pump meanwhile?)
What was the point of the visit - none whatsoever. He didn’t get any new information from us, everything was there in the file since the surgeon referral two weeks ago, the plan didn’t change, why he couldn’t click the “order pump” button right then and not in front of us - who knows.
One of the most senior oncologists in a major hospital says “I understand your frustration but I’m just a cog in the system”  

Hey, just a quick question. Once you saw the oncologist and all blood tests were done, side effects talked through how soon was your Chemotherapy after that?

Saw the oncologist last week, they took bloods said i could decide on a pump or tablets and to come back this week with decision. Im just wondering how long it will be to start Chemo as it already seems to have gone on forever. 

thankyou in advance, hope you are doing well!

Going to start next Monday. Which is almost 6 weeks after staging laparoscopy, 9 weeks after PET scan. Just praying it hasn’t spread further meanwhile. 

Hi, I waited 10 weeks after the laparoscopy to start chemo, had bloods done 2 weeks before, good luck to you 

Ah, so should be soon then. Its been a week since i had bloods, height and weight taken. I dont need a picc line fitted or anything

thankyou for your reply