My husband was admitted to hospital (A&E) in mid-Feb with breathing rather sudden breathing problems and raised heart rate. This was only a couple of days after he had been relatively close to other people to get his first jab of Pfizer, so we were initially concerned whether he could have caught the virus.
It turned out to be serious blood clots on his lungs. Treatment for the clots worked well, he was OK to go home after 5 days and is moving around normally. He is on anticoagulants now, initially for 6 months. However, as he had no history of clots and the doctor wasn't sure what the trigger could have been, a CT scan of the lower half of the body was scheduled. The upper area (chest, lungs) had already been scanned while my husband was in hospital and nothing apart from the clots was found.
The lower body scan was then done early last week and on Friday afternoon the hospital doctor (who is a consultant respiratory physician) phoned back and dropped the bombshell: liver cancer, several tumours. He said he would schedule a blood test with the GP (which will be tomorrow) and an MRI (we don't have a date yet) to check whether it is primary or secondary. He didn't want to schedule a biopsy because it might spread the tumours.
So we have very little detail so far, therefore for me it's still the "waiting for diagnosis" phase. We know from blood tests in October 2020 and autumn 2018 that bilirubin levels were at towards the upper end of the normal range. My husband was diagnosed with HCL years ago and had treatment in 2013 (hence the blood tests), platelet levels have not been a concern since then. He sometimes feels "a bit sore and bloated" on the right below the ribs, so yes, there's is something not quite right, but it does not fit the "typical" listed symptoms for liver cancer.
Our thoughts at the moment are: (1) are unexplained clots and a CT scan already sufficient information to rule out benign tumours, lesions, more blood clots or even gallstones? (2) who looked at this CT scan and worked out the conclusion? only the radiologist and a doctor with expertise on respiratory matters rather than liver? (3) based on the CT (I know the MRI has better contrast and should give more details): how many tumours? what size? locations?
We'll ask the GP to give us a printout of the blood test as soon as available. We'd also like to see the write-up from the radiologist (staff name redacted would be fine) - do we actually have the right to obtain a copy?
