First diagnosis and the waiting game
I wondered if anyone had the same experience as me. I was told my the GP that I had cancer over the phone. Apart from letting me know that it was an invasive ductal carcinoma she wasn't able to give me any more details (even though she had the biopsy report from pathology with her and it stated the grade of the cancer at the time).
Now I am a mother of 2 little boys (3/5 and 1 year old) and pregnant with another (getting induced next week to proceed with surgery the week after). The only thing that the GP did was organise an appt with a surgeon for a week later.
As I had tones of questions to ask (I was in shock and disbelief and just didn't have any information to go on) she gave me the number for the surgeon's office to see if I could get more answers there.
The phone call to the surgeon didn't get me anywhere. I never got a call back and had to endure a whole week of limbo land and googling with the little information that I had been given. I felt that this was very poorly dealt with as the first weeks are the hardest and not knowing can really play with your mind and mental state. I was a mess.
I can understand that surgeons and specialists are very busy but why don't they have someone in their team to deal with these situations. I didn't want the whole treatment unveiled to me, I just wanted to be assured that I wasn't going to die in the next few weeks or while waiting to see the surgeon. I felt like they don't care about the patient at that time. If the receptionist at least said to me that if I wanted to get more information while I was waiting on the appt with surgeon I could call someone that would really have helped me in that first dreadful week.
Adriana