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Advice on leukaemia diagnosis

  • 03-03-2019 9:23pm
    #1
    amacca
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,099 ✭✭✭


    Hi,

    Just hoping I could get some advice and opinions.

    My dad was "sort of" diagnosed with leukaemia a number of months ago.

    The consultant said lymph nodes were enlarged and removed nodes from around the abdomen area.(My parents seemed surprised the procedure to remove the nodes was carried out as at the time they thought it was just 2nd examination etc .... it almost seemed like a spur of the moment thing)

    Then a biopsy was done to determine what type of leukaemia it was or at least thats what my father and mother said.

    Then this is where I started to get worried .....the biopsy was carried out before christmas but because of christmas holidays they said we would quite a while .....we ended up waiting 6/8 weeks for the results (shouldn't they be back in 10/14 days?)

    Then as I had thought the initial purpose of the biopsy was to find out what type of leukaemia it was I was surprised when the results came back to find that the consultant and team had told my dad it showed he had a "chromosome" which did make him much more at risk of getting leukaemia or leukaemia developing and that there were markers for the disease there

    Now I'm sure that the consultant/team said a great deal more and if it had just been my dad in there I wouldn't have been at all surprised to get a fairly garbled story back (relating information in a clear concise fashion isn't one of his strengths despite the fact he is a lovely man) but my mum was with him and she confirmed the story


    What was also mentioned next has me wondering what to think...the medical guys told him to come back in 3 months so they can check how the cancer is progressing in order to determine what form of treatment would be best.....the amount of time has me worried



    So my questions..........does that sound like standard practice/normal....my dad is a an older man (late 70s) so I know or at least I think I know that the disease may progress slower than a younger person whose cells are replicating faster etc but still I'm very worried that valuable time is being lost as the mantra of early intervention increasing survival hasn't been lost on me


    Should this be moving along quicker? is he been given up on because he is old etc, do I need to fight on his behalf (he is on a good private health insurance plan)


    I don't want to regret not doing all I can but at the same time I don't want to interfere (not perhaps that there is much I can do) in what might be the optimum way of treating this cancer. Mam is in bits naturally and is a little bit disquieted by this too but both are from the doff your cap generation whereas I believe if its a system organised by humans it can have its flaws and sometimes you have to kick up a stink to get treated fairly as sad as that is.

    Does anyone out there share a similar experience or have any advice...I'm like a blind man groping around in the dark tbh?


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