Hi Reb123. Welcome to the forum.

About 12 months ago I was referred to ENT on an urgent pathway for suspected cancer due to a persistent sore throat. From my own experience, plus reading experiences of others here, and those of other people in my area, the standard protocol appears to be an endoscope up the nose, some form of biopsy, and an MRI.  I went through all these and got the all clear.

I'm speculating that most ENT departments work the same way, apart from maybe substituting a CT scan for the MRI, possibly due to availability; CT scans are much quicker than MRIs. So really your mother's experience appears to be similar to my own and others.

One thing I've learned from all this is that one shoud not be alarmed at the tests one gets referred for.  The days when doctors only performed tests to confirm their suspicions are pretty much over. Today, a patient appears, gets put through a battery of standard tests, and then when all the results are in, the doctors come to a diagnosis that they're pretty sure about. 

I hope your mother's results come back as reassuring as mine did.