1 Lump, 2 months and 3 GP's.
My diagnosis was not a simple one, they rarely are. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see my usual GP the first time I went to inquire about my pains, instead I was given an appointment with a locum doctor, who, let's just put it this way had about as much empathy and kindness as Miss Trunchball.
I had been having neck and back pain for weeks before I eventually booked myself an appointment to see a doctor as I have suffered from aches all my life and I have arthritis, so it took for things to get quite sore before I felt it justifiable to see a doctor. The pains in my chest did not seem out of the ordinary to me really and it wasn’t until I started getting a slight swelling on the front of my right chest, just under my collarbone that I started to think something odd might be happening.
How it all started;
I had been working quite hard on an office refurbishment when the pain in my chest really developed and the lump had started to appear. I was doing a lot of lifting and moving boxes, furniture etc so figured I may have triggered a slight sprain or aggravated some sort of inflammation that may have traveled from my already existing back pain. Like I said, i'm used to being in pain so really thought nothing of it.
When I eventually went to the doctor and explained what had been happening, with my existing back and neck pain, the small lump, dealing with the office refurb and feeling tired, the doctor put it down to work and said that I needed to see a Rheumatologist. She suspected it was just some sort of inflammation from all the lifting.
As I was going to try and use my private healthcare from work I asked that she write me a referral letter, which she was oddly reluctant to do but after some persuasion eventually did. After she had written the letter and handed it to me whilst I packed up to go she looked back over my notes and blurted out;
"I see you have a history of bone cancer in your family Miss Bagarone, you must have been worried?
She looked at me to see if I were but this thought had never crossed my mind. She could see the panic her statement had made as it was written all over my face.
"Oh but don't be, it's not that, im sure its just inflammation"
I was obviously taken back by what she had said, my Aunty had passed away 10 years ago from Cancer that had not been spotted early, could I now been in the same situation!? Surely not, I didn’t feel sick and Cancer had never crossed my mind, so I accepted what she had said. She was so flippant and dismissive of her own statement that I was puzzled why she had even bothered saying it at all. I was sure it wasn’t that, it couldn’t be that, so I took my letter and left.
However once I left the surgery my head started to spin, I tried to search my memory for what had happened with my Aunt and if there were any similarities, could history be repeating itself, I hoped not but I figured it would be better to be safe, so I called my surgery straight away to book another appointment and asked that I see another doctor.
Two weeks later
Fast forward to two weeks to me, walking back into into the surgery expecting to see a different doctor and hey ho what do ya know, I walked into the room to be greeted by Trunchball again, this time looking at me with an even more miffed face, immediately asking me what I was doing back there so soon and searching my face for an explanation pronto. Feeling very under pressure to explain myself I raked my brain for a response that wasn’t the real one in, that I thought she was useless and seriously unprofessional, instead opting to blame myself and said that I may not have explained myself properly in our last session, that perhaps she may have misunderstood what I had said and that I wanted her to amend my referral letter for my private health care. Let's just say she was not impressed. Once I eventually managed to explain myself and whilst she was furiously bashing the keys on her computer to amend my letter she asked me, eyes locked directly on her screen “Anything else Miss Bagarone” to which I responded
"Actually you brought up Cancer in our last meeting and it freaked me out and...”
she cut me off here so fast, staring at me plain in the face “But I assured you that’s not what it was didn’t i!!” I was shocked at her manner but wanted to get my point across so I responded firmly “Yes, but my Aunt was ill for quite some time before anyone spotted her Cancer and i'm slightly concerned that the same could be happening to me” to which she scoffed and turned back to her computer “I'm not, and if it is Cancer your private health care will pick up on it so you can be assured by them instead” then she printed my letter, handed it to me and said goodbye.
It was because of this doctors blatant dismissal and manner in which she talked about it possibly being Cancer that I in turn ended up thinking it wasn’t Cancer, she was so dismissive about the whole thing and made me so feel silly for even querying it that I just let the thought leave my head. I didn’t feel sick, I had been doing so much lifting at work and I was so used to being in pain that I just put it down to an injury and excepted all would be sorted once I got to my private health care specialist.
Going private
Roll on the next few weeks of trying to get my appointment sorted via my health care at work only to be told after weeks of backing and forthing, gathering information from my old workplaces healthcare only to be told there had been a break in my cover and that my new healthcare would not cover me in this instance. The frustration was immense not to mention my lump had been growing in size, slowly but the difference from when I first went to the doctors to the next was vast, people were starting to notice and be worried for me yet still I wasn’t. I'm not sure why when I look back now, it was so blatantly obvious that something was drastically wrong but even after the doc dropping the C bomb I really didn’t think it could be.
My lump was painful and i’d heard that Cancer wasn’t painful, right, and I’d especially never heard of Cancer of the Chest!
It was a lump just under my collarbone not in my breast, it was way to high up to be breast Cancer so I had completely ruled that out. No, it was just a sprain, I had pulled a muscle in my chest and I would probably just need to rest it, maybe get my arm up in a sling and stop using it for a bit. What a plum!!
Thank you NHS
I finally got myself back to my GPs surgery a whopping 2 months after my first visit where my lump had become so large it was now impacting on my breathing. This time I was fortunate to see a different doctor, this is where things got a little heavy. This doc was visibly worried and concerned, she wanted to refer me to the Marsden to rule out any Cancer “Just to be on the safe side”. She wasn’t entirely convinced it was Cancer but she wanted to be safe, so thought it best I get it checked, anything over 5cm is deemed worrying and mine was now almost as big as my fist. Again, i'm a eejit, I know! How could I have been so blind!!! It was only after seeing this Doc that I allowed the C bomb back into my thoughts.
Roll on another couple of weeks and some miscommunication from above GP to the Marsden, which meant that my appointment got pushed and time wasting added up to two weeks. The Marsden wouldn’t see me without a scan and the Whittington couldn’t fit me in but luckily that became irrelevant as I had an appointment with my own GP before then, it was a check up to talk about my arthritis and it was only when I saw her that shit got real. She was so shocked that she referred me to Ambulatory Care the very next day. And that is where the shit show really began.