This must be my eighth cancer scare. (No, I really don’t undergo excessive testing.) Decades ago, I’d noted a possibly normal finding but dropped it after getting no response at subspecialist visits. Recently, following pertinent CME, I asked again and the physician bit. You can guess the rest.
One night while dodging traffic I accessed on my phone the ultrasound report from the designated cancer center’s (DCC) patient portal, revealing a mass, probably exceedingly rare and benign. I’m an acceptably well-informed primary care provider, but frankly, I couldn’t have given a detailed differential diagnosis of a solid mass in that organ. This didn’t sound that worrisome.
Weeks passed without word from my physician, whom I’d seen yearly for over a decade. Would a lay patient have assumed all was OK — how often have you heard that? Perhaps he thought I’d work it up myself? After weeks of calling, I finally reached him; he insisted he’d obtain the MRI pre-authorization. Over a year later and still no word.
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