Hi Pallance.
We had a similar situation to yours in that after my husband's biopsy a couple of weeks later we were called in for what we thought was THE result. We still had hope at this point that there was no cancer but of course sat there with nerves jangling fearing the worst.
As there was no indication on the appointment letter that a Macmillan nurse
would see us, when she came out of the room and called us in my legs just about buckled. She was wearing the distinctive black uniform with green piping so I assumed straight away what our news was going to be.
Unfortunately we were told there had been an admin mix up and they did not have the biopsy results yet and had sent the appointment letter in error so we had to go away and await a further appointment.
Not wishing to demean specialist oncology nurses but I personally do not think they should be assigned to you until a doctor gives you the cancer diagnosis. Maybe they think bad news comes better from a nurse. Maybe some people don't mind who tells them and of course it relieves the doctor's of the responsibility. To me it only seems recently that nurses have been delegated to delivering bad news perhaps another result of an overstretched NHS?
Maybe we are just sensitive souls of a generation where you expect a doctor to give you such a life changing diagnosis. Well that's my tuppenny's worth on it rightly or wrongly.
Pallance. What you can do if you feel strongly is phone the hospital or tell the receptionist at your appointment that you would rather see the Consultant or registrar at this stage.The clinics are usually run jointly ( well at our local hospital they were) . The nurse also told us we could see the consultant the next time if we asked when we attended so we did that.
Good luck for when you get your results.
Regards Ann
Edited by member 12 Mar 2018 at 11:27
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