The article makes and excellent point. I was visiting a cousin and his wife in Canada a few years ago. She had just had a biopsy, the first week of May. She was not notified until the end of June that she had cancer, and she did not get to start chemo until mid August. I would have been camped out at the Pathologist’s front door, ditto for the Oncologist, if I had to face that wait and uncertainty. My cousin and his wife, however, were resigned to their fate and didn’t see any problem with those timeframes. They were reluctant to rock the boat and seem to be demanding special treatment.
I hear you. Sometimes, though, it’s not that simple.
I had a colo-rectal tumor in 1996. All tests were inconclusive, biopsy, CT scan, barium enema and more. The only doc who insisted on colon cancer was the surgeon, naturally, so he could cut me open. I opted to go with his advice.
Good thing, too. He found a tumor the size of a baseball at the colo-rectal curve. The tumor itself turned out to be benign, but colon cancer cells were found in 3 of the 7 lymph nodes examined.
The surgeon never bragged about how he was right. I heard this from the oncologist, who admitted that he had been wrong.