Hello Jmc2285 and welcome to Cancer Chat, 

I am not sure whether the waiting time means good news or bad news but the 3 weeks' wait can feel like an awfully long time. I hope that you will hear from other members who have experienced this and that they will be along to tell you more about how it went for them 

All you can do for now is wait which is not easy but try not to anticipate what it might be. All you can do is take one day at a time and it won't be long now until you get some clarity on this. The best thing to do in the meantime is to keep busy and distracted if you can and avoid looking things up online. I can imagine it is hard for you to do this at the moment but it will help you feel a little less anxious. 

I hope you will also hear from others here who have been through all this before and that they will be along soon to share their story with you. 

Keeping everything crossed for you that everything turns out fine. 

Best wishes, 

Lucie, Cancer Chat Moderator

I had a biopsy on my thyroid two and a half years ago. Apologies for not replying sooner; I only just saw this. I am in Ireland, so might be different over here, but my feeling is that if there were bad news, they would be in touch with you a lot sooner than 5 weeks after the biopsy. They would also likely want to see you face-to-face, though of course, covid has had an impact on this.

In my case, I had an appointment for a week after the biopsy. This was made before they knew what the results were going to be, but even with that, I got a call two days before my appointment, looking for the scans from the ultrasound to be sent on to the specialist. That sort of worried me a bit and I was right to be. 

A five week wait for a phone appointment sounds to me like they don't think there is any particular urgency.

I will add though that thyroid cancer is unlikely to present any particular urgency anyway. Even if you do have cancer, and I would think that unlikely - something like 95% of nodules biopsied are benign - the most common types of thyroid cancer have a survival rate that comes close to 100%, especially among "younger" people (under about 50) and it is rare they use anything like chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Worst case scenario is the removal of your thyroid. I was back to work and to my normal life a month later.