Hi Jenn123.

I've written about this sort of thing before on this site - in many respects it would be better if doctors and nurses just said nothing at all about how patients might get their results, because often the patient's actual experience is quite different from what they were told. 

Can you look at the envelope and see if there's a date on it?  Often appointment letters are sent out before results are known, and this does seem a distinct possibility for your case, because it seems highly unlikely that the path lab could turnaround your biopsy results in a mere 24 hours. I've heard of turnaround times running into weeks in some hospitals.  

I think it's quite possible that whoever told you about the phone call/letter was trying to be helpful but actually gave you out-of-date information.  If I were a consultant in charge of a department I would ban all my doctors and nurses from giving out any information/speculation on the delivery of results. 

I do know that many consultants always arrange for their patients to receive the news (good or bad) at a face-to-face meeting.  This is because even if cancer has been ruled out, the patient may still need some form of follow up treatment, guidance or advice.  

That must be right because the letter is the dated the 4th November and that was the day I was in there and has all it done! 
they defiantly need to work on how to tell people to expect results because they said I would get a phone call if good news appointment if bad and course I panicked when I got a appointment. And this was a consultant telling me.
my appointment is for next Tuesday and I've rang them to see if they can find out and they said it is biopsy results but everyone has to go to an appointment for results, there never done over the phone. 
I feel a lot better after the phone call I was so scared when I got the letter expecting the worse but hopefully it's nothing bad.

thanks for the reply

Hi Jenn.

This really annoys me, since your story crops up time and time again on this site. 

I think you can reasonably tell the consultant how scared you were to receive the letter after being told to expect a phone call.  Maybe that will make him or her think again in the future. 

Maybe we need to start a campaign within Cancer Research UK to stop this sort of thing happening to others?  No doubt many doctors think of this as some trivial issue, but I think it causes a lot of unnecessary anguish to scared patients.

Yes defiantly they are causing unnecessary worrying from people. I couldn't of gone all weekend without having to atleast ring and ask  Also he told me would take 7-14 days to get results so also worried me that it is a lot quicker.

glad it's not just me that this happens to! Thanks for the reply