How long would you want to wait?

For biopsy results for potential cancer? About 30 seconds. In New Zealand you get to wait 10 days, unless for breast cancer where the wait currently is 5 days. This five day turnaround is now under fire due to errors by pathologists who are rushing to get their job done.

Where I go for treatment, a biopsy is usually available in a few days - sometimes longer for other cancers. I have learned they usually tell me it will take about a week but often I hear much sooner.

There are two sides of the waiting for results issue. First comes the patient who wants the results in a nano-second. (Thank you to Amazon to training the public to expect everything instantly.) Patients don't want to wait. Waiting causes stress. Waiting causes crankiness AND crabbiness. Waiting causes that little voice in your head to tell you that it will be really BAD,

But on the other side are the pathologists who need the time to do their jobs. We don't want them to rush and make mistakes - which is what happened in New Zealand (which is why there was an article on this that I read). That is really BAD.

However I find the idea of waiting 10 days for a biopsy result to be too damn long.

Today's little tizzy

I finally took a good look at my biopsy incision when I took a shower this afternoon. It looked like it had pus coming out of it! I panicked slightly and called the dr's office. The PA wanted me to come in to take a look at it because she said they wouldn't do the second biopsy if I had an infection.

She looked at it and said it was fine. Possibly not pus but just some bacitracin from the first biopsy and it was healing fine. Okay. So I panicked a little. Stress causes bad reactions to lots of little things...

Gee whiz I can't wait for another one of these.........