Day 5 – Sarcoma clinic
Today we went to the sarcoma clinic at Chorley hospital. I have to say never being before, it’s quite a nice hospital, well, as nice as hospitals come anyway. We shadowed a specialist nurse and a plastic surgeon who help to diagnose people who have been referred by their GP because they have found a “lump” that wasn’t originally there or that has changed recently. There are many types of sarcomas which are tumours that grow in connective tissue such as muscle, tendons, blood vessels, nerves, fatty and fibrous tissue and also bone. They make up for 1% of all cancer diagnoses. The story of the first patient particularly touched me, probably due to the fact that she was female and not much older than me. She had found a lump on her inner thigh, and had previously had an ultra sound scan on it and a MRI that had proved inconclusive. The next stage was a board meeting with radiographers, pathologists, surgeons and the specialist nurse to look at the scans an make a decision on the next stage of this young woman’s treatment. After the doctor explained this to her she was asking him a few questions, her lips were trembling, her voice was breaking and you could literally see the fear in her eyes that this could potentially be something very serious. At this point I was fighting back the lump in my throat. I couldn’t imagine how scared she must be especially since she shared with us she lost her mother to cancer 6 years ago, and to be honest I couldn’t believe she was sat here going through this alone. The doctor and nurse tried to reassure her that her previous inconclusive results were a good sign and to try not to worry. When the patient had left I asked the specialist nurse as to whether they can tell whether its a “bad” (malignant) tumour or a benign one (which in most cases can just be removed) just from looking and feeling the tumour, which she did inform me in most cases you can tell, as if it was bad it would maybe change the colour of the skin, or it would have swelling around it, or it may feel harder and the way she explained it was ” like a rough stone” which to be honest is strangely exactly how I would imagine it. However she did go on to say that rarely a “lump” they think may be harmless comes back from the pathology lab to be the opposite, in which case they quickly decide on the treatment for that patient. Another patient that we saw was a male in his mid 40s, he had a rather large very pronounced lump on the back of his neck which had been there for 20 years but had recently increased in size. The doctor told him that he thought it could be a Lipoma which is basically a tumour made from a lump of fat under the skin and was sent for a ultra sound scan and an appointment was made for 2 weeks time to review his results. I learnt that the first port of call for these cases start with an ultra sound, this is to see how much blood (if any) flows to and through the tumour. If the doctors do not get the information they need from this then they may be sent for a MRI scan or a ultra sound led biopsy which the sample is then sent to the lab. The specialist nurse told us that only 2% of people they see end up to have a malignant tumour which was lower than I would of expected and almost nice to hear.
