Hiya 

So long story.

About 10 weeks ago I forced my 34 year old former light smoker (hasn't smoked for 5 years, sporadically for 2 before that and then maybe 10 a day before that) husband to go to the doctors with chest pain. He gets it very occasionally, maybe every 10-14 days, it seems to coincide with work (he has an incredibly stressful job as well as mental health issues) and it can be on his left side, right side and top middle of chest. The doctor sent him for a CXR as is standard. He had that and was told to have another one two weeks later as they had found "an ill defined focal haze over the 7th posterior and anterior rib, most likely an artifact caused by summation of blood vessels. Repeat CXR in two weeks to rule out any underlying lesion". So we panicked a little bit and spoke to the doctor again and he was really reassuring, he was 95% it would come back clear and if not it would be a CT scan that would most likely come back clear. That it didn't look anything like cancer and if he was concerned it was he would tell us it was a possibility. 
 

So two weeks later he has another CXR and the same thing is still there, hasn't changed in size or shape. The doctor said that he would send him for CT scan and would mark it urgent to get it done to put our minds at rest. We were told nothing about it being a suspected cancer referral (although that's what I'm worried about). In between the two CXR's my husband had an appointment with another doctor regarding his deteriorating mental health and suicidal thoughts.
 

So we wait and hear nothing until today when, deciding we have waited a fair while, we ring the GP, where the receptionist is shocked to hear that we haven't heard anything despite it being marked urgent. We ring the appointments line where we are told that he has been sent two letters about having a blood test done so they know if he needs to have contrast dye (we haven't received anything) and that once he has had the tests done, the results and the CXR's will be sent to a radiographer who will look at them and decide whether to book him in urgently, non urgently, or if the CT scan needs doing at all (there is a six week wait for urgent scans once the radiographer has looked at it!)
 

I guess what I'm asking is has anyone else had to have the blood tests done before the CT scan like this, is there a way you can be referred urgently but not on the suspected cancer pathway, could it be because of his incredibly poor mental health that the doctor has decided to mark it urgent just to try and get it done. I see people being rung up within two or three days to book scans with suspected cancer (with no mention of blood tests being done first) and we have had to wait nearly five weeks to find out his is stuck in the system. We had taken the fact that we hadn't heard anything yet as it being non urgent. Do doctors have very loose guidelines for urgent referrals so that most people get sent urgently? 
 

Add on top of this I'm 6 months pregnant and as you can imagine my head is all over the place.