A Thunder Bay, Ont., nurse who lost her mother last summer to Stage 4 T-cell lymphoma is pushing for a new policy to make it easier for patients to receive cancer diagnoses. She wants to know why a patient can't see a hematologist until the cancer is verified. Here's what we learned.
Mariah Mrakic-TenHave holds a photo of her mother, Heidi Smith, who died last summer of Stage 4 T-cell lymphoma. Mrakic-TenHave wants an easier way for patients to see a specialist so they can get a quicker cancer diagnosis.
Smith, who was already a breast cancer survivor, received a number of diagnostic tests over 15 months at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre . They included blood tests, MRIs, needle nose aspirations and other biopsies — but the results kept coming back inconclusive. Mrakic-TenHave said her mother underwent testing for more than a year in Thunder Bay. After that, Mrakic-TenHave contacted a surgeon in Toronto who had previously treated her mother's breast cancer 10 years before. Three weeks later, Smith had a sixth biopsy, which finally resulted in a cancer diagnosis, followed by chemotherapy in Toronto over the next five months.
A patient with a previous history of cancer gets to see a specialist when testing yields inconclusive results. There are two malignant hematologists at the TBRHSC. Both specialists are tasked with treating cancers, not diagnosing them.
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