For future reference for anyone who may seek answers in relation to this thread:
The hospital has finally booked my mum in for surgery. This will eventuate in a wait time between diagnosis and surgery of 2.5 weeks (which I am more than happy with). She’s going to Peter Mac in Melbourne but as a private patient.
The key source of concern for us was that we were being told conflicting information by both the clinic and hospital. We were to expect that everything would be sorted within 1-2 days after diagnosis but we didn’t hear from anybody. Upon calling up the hospital, we were told that our referral has not even been received yet from the clinic. But the clinic had told us that they’d sent it right away on the day of diagnosis. This caused a painful panic for us and I spent the next two sleepless days phoning between the hospital and clinic to follow up, with no results and only more conflicting information to add to the pile. Eventually we went to see the clinic in person this morning and they were able to sort it out for us.
What I learnt from this experience was that these places (at least the ones I dealt with) are not very transparent and perhaps tend to tell you little white lies or feed you speculation to try and temporarily get rid of you. I’m sure my mum’s referral would have been sorted out eventually, but how soon, I really don’t know.
My advice is that if you’re not being kept up to date or openly informed about the process, go to the clinic/hospital in person and push for answers. Sometimes you need to make yourself heard.
