5 week wait for biopsy and scan results - is that right?

Hi Dave,

welcome, and sorry you find yourself here.

The wait for results is always reliant on the MDT meeting, if you are lucky they meet on a week, unlucky and you just missed the last one and you have to wait 4 weeks, and then your appointment has to be after that, so 5 weeks should be the max wait.

The reason that the medical profession are quite “relaxed” on timescales is that a few weeks will make no difference to the ultimate outcome.  TC is a relatively slow spreader.

What is always difficult for the patient, you, me, is the waiting for results and appointments, we want our minds put at rest ASAP.  I have become quite good at pushing it out of my mind, but I’ve been dealing with this for over 2 years, and I’m now confident the speed the medical profession moves at is about right.  There is no doubt I think they could share info quicker eg some of my care was in private and info share was much better. 

The good news is that the waiting and anxiety it can cause is the worst many men suffer through having TC.  Some of us have to have more treatment, but 95% of us are here 5 years later.

i found this forum really reassuring, I saw so many positive stories that I started to believe I would be cured.

take care

dan

Hi Dan,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post and I'm sorry to hear you've been dealing with this for more than 2 years. 

Me too, I've found a lot of comfort in some of the messages I've seen on here and i think there's real value in sharing experiences. It's really heartening to know that people will take the time to write messages of support and advice to people who are worried.

That's good to hear, if it needed to be quicker, i'm sure it would be quicker. I was initially told it would be 7 - 10 days to get the results and now that's jumped to 5 weeks. I don't wish to speculate too much on the significance of a longer wait than usual but the non-urgency hopefully means the situation is under control. As you say, that could just be because I've missed an MDT meeting or could just be that's the next available time they can see me and they want to go through it face to face. 

We have to trust the process. As you well know, it's mental impact of waiting that's difficult especially when I thought news was imminent and now have another 3 weeks to wait.

Thanks again for your message. I hope you're finding as much support for yourself on here as you provide to others. 

All the best,
Dave

My situation is almost as you describe...

Surgery was 5 days ago. After it, I got some partial informations regarding « nothing major » on PET Scan, Tumors markers OK and a probable seminoma (I am 41 years old).

My next (virtual) meeting was supposed to be 6 weeks after surgery (urologist report). But there was another small paper with 4 weeks (non-virtual) so they did book me for this one. 

On my 1st meeting with the urologist, he wasn’t so sure when he red the radiologist report and the words « 3.5 cm heterogenous mass with calcifications ». He told me that this sounds like a non-seminoma. 

I think it might be « normal » to wait reading here others story. But. 

Waiting time is pretty long...

Hi Dave

I waited a number of weeks. I'm sure you'll hear soon. They won't start any further treatment (if it is required) until you are fully recovered from your operation, so in their minds no time is being wasted and they'll be prioritising their caseload accordingly. However, this comes at the cost of you worrying.  It is horrible not knowing, but please don't worry that any delay is going to affect your outcome.

Best wishes

G