I am one of the enquiry nurses. Our moderator Lucie has asked me if there is anything I might be able to add to your post. There isn’t a test that can tell a doctor how old a cancer is so they can’t be sure when a cancer started or spread, but they may be able to give an estimate, so do ask them. In general cancers have often been there for many months and possibly even years before they are detected. In the early stages, when a cancer is still very small, it probably wouldn’t cause any symptoms and so would be hard to detect. Even when cancer is bigger or has spread it may not cause particularly noticeable symptoms for quite a while.
